june 12, pt. 2

We were then taken to a restaurant hundreds of years old from the Edo period. It was in the same area of Tokyo that Sensei Johnson grew up in and served a type of food that I’ve never had before. The fish is served raw, but then “user” cooked over a small gas fire right on the table.


We then walked down the road to a small Taiko drum shop and museum. We got a chance to play on different percussion equipment such as congas, bongos, steel drums, snare drums, and the traditional Taiko drums.


After that we went to “日本のタイムズスックエア” (“Japans ‘Times Square‘“): Ginza Square. It is one of the biggest and most expensive shopping centers in the world. It gets so crowded that on weekend afternoons the streets get temporarily shutdown to cars in order for the dense population of people to get from building to building without being run-over. We went into the 8-story high Sony building where they were exhibiting many new technologies that have yet to be publicly released. The often made assumption that Japan is the worlds leader in technology could be proven true when looking around at the Sonybuilding. They offered plasma screen T.V.’s where, with a set of special glasses, programming could be viewed in 3-D. Not just pre-made 3-D movies, but ANY show being broadcasted. I got to watch a few minutes of the Uruguay soccer game with the players right at my fingertips. They also had some hip iPad rival units. While I’m not interested in an iPad at all, what Sony was working on seemed brilliant.




walking to ginza


look at all the people!

We were all pretty beat after that, and night had started falling, so we made one last stop before heading back to the dorms. We went by the Emperor of Japans house. It’s only open to the public twice a year (on his birthday and on new years), but you can still stand outside of it and take pictures of it and his garden from very, very far away.

So then we headed back to the dorms, stopping at the same noodle shop we stopped at the night before for dinner. It was a very fun and interesting day, but also very tiring.