Turns out I’m not doing a very good job of blending in. For the first time in my life I had a cop ask me for my ID. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when I saw two cops on the sidewalk. One of them started to ask me questions and as long as he seemed to be helpful, I thought I’d just ask him if I was at the right place on my map. He just asked if I had any ID on me. I handed him my passport and he said something like, “I guess you are from America,” and sent me on my way. Really, how many tourists with maps get asked for their ID on the street? Not only has FaceTime showed me that I’m not as pretty as I thought I was, I must also look fairly unsavory as well.

This was the second time someone thought I was speaking funny, and both times I had a cough drop in my mouth. I think it makes my tongue numb. I had another bad night of sleep with the coughing and woke up tired as hell. It may have been the exercising contributing to both the fatigue and the coughing so I may just lay off until I get home and just resign myself to being a butterball.

I didn’t get an early start, but I figured I’d check out another corner of Shinjuku city that had a lot of literary areas, or so it looked on the map. I started out going by that hill by my mom’s friends old apartment, and found the actual Hill.

I think it looks better when I’m not taking a picture into the sky.

It’s a little hard to see the inscription on the rock but the hill is 44.6m or about 146ft above sea level. That isn’t even as high as where I live in Portland.

There was a view through the trees of Shinjuku.

Then it was off to my meeting with the police. There are shrines and temples all long the road and I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep them straight. This is the one where I must have offended the gods because right after this they set the cops on me.

I don’t know much of my Japanese history, but here’s the grave of the Hayashi family. Hayashi is not an uncommon name, and there must be thousands of famous Hayashi’s in Japanese history. There was a placard, but I can’t read Japanese that well. Especially not the Japanese they put on placards.

I thought this might be the grave of Seki Takakazu (a famous mathemetician) or maybe a famous actress Matsui Sumako. The name on the sign is neither of theirs.

The first of the many temple pictures from today of Tamon-in Temple.

The actual temple at Tamon-in.

While there is a graveyard beyond the parking lot, there appear to be graves lining the right side of the parking lot as well.

I wandered around the neighborhood and found where Natsume Sōseki died. There’s a park where his house was. He was one of the foremost novelists of the Meiji era, used to be on the ¥1,000 bill, and I think his granddaughter taught at University of Oregon.

I had no idea I’d be seeing so many temples and they started to blend together, especially since I can’t read the signs for crap. I think this is Raiko-ji Temple.

And the temple of Raiko-ji.

The gate to the graveyard.

I didn’t take pictures of every temple I saw today, by the way.

Since the cop hassled me for being a foreigner today, I figured I should eat at Mickey D’s. Yeah, that’s right, since someone else treated me like crap, I should also treat myself like crap. America, F*ck Yeah!

The hamburger was a tsukimi (autumn moon viewing) special and had an egg on it.

As you can imagine, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. At least it was cheap. The signs along that part of the street were really unassuming and I had to walk by the Mickey D’s before I noticed it. After I left, I found a Mos Burger two doors down. I should have eaten there.

I backtracked to find the birthplace of Natsume Sōseki. I didn’t realize that what was marked on the map was going to just be an obelisk and a placard in front of a Japanese fast food store.

Across the intersection was the Ana-hachimangu shrine. There’s a police box to the left and I gave it a wide berth.

A closer look at the stairs.

Here’s the front of the gate and the annual used-book sale was going on in the courtyard to the left.

When the map said there were old book stores (it actually said, “Antiquarian Booksellers”) I didn’t realize there would be so many stores. I was impressed. It was much better than the sporting goods stores and the musical instrument stores I saw yesterday.

And the actual shrine.

I walked through the campus of Waseda University, which was the largest campus I’ve seen in Japan. I didn’t take any pictures because there were yoots everywhere and I needed to get away from them. There were statues of scholars on campus, but they were unhappy looking guys wearing robes and mortarboards.

Also on campus was the Tsubouchi Memorial theatre museum.

I thought about taking a picture of Okuma Garden, whatever significance that has, but it was full of yoots. The whole area was crawling with yoots.

As I escaped from Waseda University and it’s yoots, I found the terminus of the Toden Arakawa line trolley which still uses old replicas of the original trolleys.

Near the trolley terminus is Kansen-en park that has a spring they used to brew green tea.

It also had a cat that wanted to eat the koi that were much bigger than the cat.

Here’s where the koi live.

Across the Kandagawa river is the Tokyo Somemonogatari Museum. Or at least that’s what I think it is. I just wandered in and took some pictures because no one was around.

I think youc an take lessons in Japanese traditional dyeing techniques as well (if you could find someone).

On my wanderings I saw a two-level garage. I guess this is why they really make sure that cars don’t leak oil in Japan and I have no idea how they get the top cars out.

Next stop was Ryocho-in Temple which had two gates side-by-side. Here’s the one to the right.

And the temple to the right.

 

Here’s the left gate.

And the temple to the left.

I looked all over for the site of Takadanobaba but I couldn’t find a thing though the map clearly marked the spot I was searching. I did finally find one of the two placard that the map indicated was “Explanation board of Remains of Takadanobaba,” but they were a ways from the actual site.

I was finally done with my explorations and headed for the Takadanobaba train station, but I went by the Suwa-jinja.

Which is ned to Genkoku-ji Temple.

Which is next to Taue-jizo.

I got back safely without any more interaction with the police. There were a few Korean people checking into the hotel who were yelling at each other and who either couldn’t figure out an automatic door or just enjoyed bashing the baggage cart into both doors on the way to the lobby.

I gave up on trying to find an restaurant for dinner and bought food at the Tesco and you know what? It was cheap and it was pretty good.

It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but it’s cleaning day and I have to be out of my room from 10AM to 2PM. I wonder where I should go.