UPDATED

It takes me a surprisingly long time to sort the photos from two sources and to remember whatever the hell I did in the heat of day, wandering around Tokyo, and I just got back from meeting my old co-worker Suzuki-san (whose picture I forgot to take) and it’s 11:13PM. Comments are coming tomorrow. Pictures are below if you want to make up your own captions. They should be updated by Thursday evening (if I’m getting my time zone corrections right).

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I’m going to write this like it was last night, so the timing is going to sound funny. Or not, we’ll see.

OK, here we go. I was trying to decide where to go and since Kevin my scary black belt next door neighbor asked me to check out the main headquarters of his branch of Aikido. If you’ve ever met Kevin, you’ll know I’m kidding as he’s a super friendly and nice guy. Honestly I was trying to figure out what to do for the day and the headquarters was only 1.3 miles away according to Google Maps.

I should go on a rant about effing Google maps on my iPhone which is only slightly less crappy than the Maps application on the iPhone, but I won’t. I’m glad I’m in Japan and have generally known where I was going otherwise I’d be lost and dead by now.

Anyway, for some reason I thought I’d take pictures of the 1.3 miles to the Aikido HQ since it was very near where Five-0 was hassling me the other day.

First is heading out of the hotel, towards the rail station, through Korea town. That green bridge is actually the JR train overpass.

Things get a little more busy between the two train stations, Okubo and Shin-Okubo. Once again, you can see the train overpass in the distance, painted in green.

But Korea Town doesn’t get interesting until you get past Shin-Okubo station. It’s really busy, I don’t recognize much of the food, and a lot of the time people aren’t speaking a language I understand.

Past Korea Town is East Shinjuku, where my mom’s friend lived and where the 44.6m high “mountain” is located. I’ve been here a few times if you remember all the pictures. The hill is to the left and the path to my mom’s friend’s old house is right by that brick building on the right.

The directions looked pretty clear, but you veered off the main street into the neighborhood.

Up some steep slopes only to go back down.

I think the green painted sides mean this is a heavily travelled street and that’s what passes for a sidewalk.

Time for a side-trip to another temple.

Just as an aside, most of the Korean people I know are really Christian and Korea Town is full of Christian churches.

I think most of the reason for all the temples is the graveyards. With so many people living in Tokyo, there have to be a lot of graveyards.

Like this.

Back on the path to the Aikido HQ and I had to take a detour past an apartment building.

I’m almost there.

And here it is! At first I had misgivings because that gold car is a bedazzled Mercedes-Benz. Rhinestones all over as accents. I only thing gangsters can pull that off.

A view from the other side.

I really didn’t have any business there, so I went in, looked at the books they had for sale in the lobby, and bought Kevin a t-shirt. Kevin’s not a tiny guy so I’m not sure a Japanese XL is going to fit him, but I had to try.

After all that, I figured instead of the direct route, I’d see if there was a “easy route” that didn’t take me through all the twists and turns of the neighborhood. Looking down the road opposed the way I came, it looked like there was a busy road. When I got to the busy road you can see a sign on the pole for “Aikido Hombu Dojo”.

And here’s a view of the road.

Unsurprisingly, the busy road lead to a BUSIER road.

Where I saw but didn’t get hassled by the Man. (Seriously, there were several riot buses going by. I’m not sure what was going on.)

It was actually hot as balls so I headed back to the hotel to change into shorts. It was lunch time so I got some rice balls and karaage chicken from the Tesco and I’m sure it has to be awful for me because it was tasty.

I headed back to the last section of Shinjuku that I hadn’t been to.

Every night I’ve heard fire engines and ambulances go by and I wondered why. Turns out the main Shinjuku fire station is only three or four blocks down the road.

And it’s not a tiny fire station.

I got the tourist map of Ochiai out and the first shrine I saw was closed!

It’s also used as a pre-school and the kids wet out playing in the courtyard.

No matter, onto the Some-no Sato Futaba-en, a Shinjuku mini-museum of fabric dyeing.

The main window is to the left of the path.

From another angle, here’s the brushes and bottles for dye.

I snuck some pictures of the inside shop.

There’s even an area where you can sit and have coffee.

Onto a real museum, the Hayashi Fumiko Memorial Hall.

I don’t know who she is, so I didn’t go in.

I also passed the Mejiro Gakuen ruins, because they’re on the grounds of a college and the museum was about to close.

This is a shrine that I don’t remember seeing on the map.

The shrine itself.

But I did finally take a picture of the inside of a shrine.

Nakai Shusse Fudo do is on the map and has an old statue that’s only on display once a month. I couldn’t see a thing.

I got more and more into commercial areas with stores and shops and found Jisho-In

The temple itself didn’t look all that interesting.

But it’s the place where the beckoning cat (maneki neko) you see a lot of stores was first seen. According to the guide map, “… Ota Dokan lost his way in the midst of the battle but made a narrow escape for death beckoned by a black cat.”

It was getting close to 5PM and I was meeting my friend and old co-worker Suzuki-san for dinner. But Hobby Center Kato beckoned me and was only a short distance away. It turned out to be a model railroad company’s showroom. I didn’t want to take pictures inside (though I could have asked) but there were hundreds and hundreds of model trains. Not just all the variants of the trains seen throughout Japan, but American locomotives as well! BN, BNSF, SF, UP, if you’re from the west coast you know what those mean.

It was a bit of a hike back to the hotel, but very close to “home” I found the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Yodobashi Market. Funny how you don’t see things that are close by if you only go one direction.

I met Suzuki-san at Nakano Station since we figured it would be easier than trying to find each other at Shinjuku again. As we usually do, we wandered around looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on a fish restaurant that looked good. There’s a giant grill in the middle of the room with seats around it.

Katsuo sashimi.

Hairy crab.

Some kind of teriyaki.

I forgot to take pictures of the grilled sanma I devoured.

And here’s the final GIANT rice ball, tea and miso soup.

We had coffee at a family restaurant before heading off.

Like I said, I forgot to take a picture of Suzuki-san. His hair is shorter, but he looks like he always did. 🙂

Now I’m off (the next day) to see a friend from high school who seems to write “how to get rich” books in Japan. I think how you get rich is to write the books and have people pay for your seminars. I’ll have to ask him.