Japanese Culture! (1)

Dear readers,

Last week, I was finally able to see some of Tokyo's cultural highlights on an orienteering tour around the city. The participants of the tour (http://www.siengp.titech.ac.jp/~sage/Tori_e.php) were split into groups, so together with 4 other students (1 Japanese, 2 Indonesian, 1 Chinese), I started my round trip through the capital. There will be more pictures than usual in this post so it might look a bit strangely formatted...

Our first stop was Shibuya. For the orienteering tour, we had to take pictures and answer questions via Twitter, and each picture should include this logo.
We had day passes for the Tokyo metro system and moved from place to place by train.
In Shibuya station, there is a very large work of art by Japanese painter Taro Okamoto, called the myth of tomorrow. It is really oversize and a scary piece, depicting some kind of animal perhaps (which I would not want to eat though, despite the great Japanese cuisine.

Next, we went to the Meiji Shrine (明治神宮) that is located a few km north of Shibuya. This shrine is dedicated to the Meiji emperor (important ruler in Japanese history), and on the way from the main gate to the main house, you will pass by a collection of sake and wine casks, the latter were donated by the French to honour the emperor.
On that day, there was a festival and many weddings, which meant that there were people in traditional Japanese wear. I was lucky enough to get a photo with them. The little girl has a very complicated dress and hairstyle, all in all very impressive.

And so, after passing several tents displaying flowers and bonsai trees, we arrived at the main building. There were many people there, despite a little rain that had begun to fall. If you look closely at the center of the image (I know that the quality is not great), you will find a traditional Japanese dancer with a fan. He was accompanied by traditional music (yes everything was very traditional, but that's really interesting to see!). This was a great bonus to the visit of the shrine.
What I liked most about this place is the park: A spot of green in the midst of a concrete plain. It was very refreshing to see a forest, even though it was small.

After the Meiji shrine, we went to the Shinjuku area (Shinjuku is the station with most passengers passing, world wide). There, we had lunch in a small udon shop, which was delicious!
Strengthened, we made our way to Ikebukuro to have a look at the animate store, which is very popular with girls who read manga and watch anime. The rush into the store was pretty overwhelming, I only visited the ground level (selling different posters, action figures, books, etc.) as the stairs were  evidently clogged with ecstatic girls/women! To join in, I bought a small figurine of Gintama for 200 yen (2 CHF) :)

Read more in the next post!