August 9, 2007
Japan Experience Day 11 (Aug 8) More Nihongo, the 45th floor of City Hall, an Emperor’s Shrine & Kendo Bamboo Sword Madness!
Everyone strikes a pose with Japanese kid's television characters on the wall in a Shinjuku underground walkway!
Everyone arrived on Wednesday easily on Wednesday, no traffic jams to be scene. Yano-Sensei and I kicked started the day with the Japanese lesson. For my beginner’s group, we learned how to tell time (ima nan-ji desu ka? what time is it now), so that all day long I could ask them at any moment!
The area around west side of Shinjuku station - the station is the long centre piece going left to right.
Next up was picking up our bento box lunches from Akakura-San and whisking away on the Saikyo line to Shinjuku, where we went to the Kinokuniya Bookstore, a large chain store with foreign books on the 7th floor. Most big book stores now have a foreign language selection, but for years, Kinokuniya in Shinjuku has been a main haunt for foreigners. They always have a great selection of hard to find English books on Japan, plus a great variety of Japanese language study books.
Tokyo's Metropolitan 'City Hall' Skyscrapers!
Next up was a hike through some tunnels under Shinjuku to arrive at Tokyo’s ‘City Hall’, formally the Tokyo Metropolitan Buildings, which makes sense not calling it a ‘hall’ since it is several skyscrapers!
The eastern part of central Tokyo. The white dome is Tokyo Dome, known as the Big Egg!
The two main towers, named North and South, have observation decks on the 45th floors, so we rode high-speed elevators up, ears popping along the way.
Tokyo Tower, with the brand new Tokyo Midtown Center in front of it in Roppongi. When Tokyo Tower was completed back in 1958, is was pretty much the tallest building in Tokyo, and could be seen from anywhere, giving the Japanese a sense that the country was rising to recovery from the war a decade previously.
The 360 degree views are of course breath taking! If it is a windy day and the sky is clear, you can see Mt. Fuji too, but today, we could only just make out the base.
A forest in the city? That's Yoyogi Park, with the Meiji Jingu Shrine hiding in the middle.
From these towers, one can see all the way to north past Akabane, and south to Yokohama, which is easy to spot with the Yokohama Landmark Tower.
Meiji Jingu Shrine's roof!
We could also see an entire forest in the middle of the city, called Yoyogi Park. In the middle of the park is the Meiji Jingu Shrine, named at Emperor Meiji who was the first emperor in the modern period from 1868.
A huge torii gate, one of several leading to the shrine.
The hike to the shrine was pretty hot, two of our crew escaping to the subway system, and the rest of us brave souls finally succumbing to a taxi ride. More adventure!
The main shrine building inside the walls. Meiji is one of the three most important Shinto shrines in Japan.
Walking on Yoyogi’s wide gravel lanes covered by massive cedar trees was incredibly cool and refreshing, several degrees cooler than the city streets. The shrine was also very peaceful and calm, which was sort of hard to imagine it is sitting smack dab in the middle of the world’s largest metropolis!
A peaceful shrine wall.
Back at school, we had our kendo lesson from the school’s 7th degree kendo club master, Sasaki-Sensei. It seemed at first all he said was ROAR!
The start of the kendo lesson with Sasaki-Sensei!
As he kept yelling commands at all the regular club members and he tried to express the importance of the spirit bursting out in a strong voice when one performs kendo. After a quick lesson in stance and guard, whacking the club members in the armor began!
Attack!!! Kiaiiiiii!!!!
Marvin in full head gear!
Jessica watching the bamboo shinai sword whiz by!
Sasaki Sensei seemed especially pleased with Jessica, her karate training and tournament experience really paying off, so much so I think he wanted to adopt her right then and there!
Our samurai warriors!