Japanese Culture (2)

From Ikebukuro, we continued towards Korakuen, which is in the north of Tokyo. Directly at the station there is the Tokyo Dome, a 55'000 person fitting baseball arena. Sadly, there was no possibility to enter the stadium, but there was a small amusement park right next to it. If the weather hadn't been as wet, we might have taken a ride on this very nice looking roller coaster (which has a 50 m long, very steep drop)!

We then went on to Ginza, which is in the southern half of Tokyo. It is a modern quarter, with very new and fancy buildings. There is a large shopping mile at
the foot of this building.


Also, there is a statue of a spider, about 5 m tall, standing right next to the tower (I'm not showing any picture in case some of you are scared of large spiders ^^).
At around 5 pm, we returned to the starting point of the tour (university) to evaluate the orienteering rankings. Our group made 5th place (out of 7), but we enjoyed the tour a lot more than we would have if we were competing seriously. After dinner, a select few, including myself, went to sing at a karaoke place near the campus. After this pretty intensive and tiring day, a good night's (and morning's) sleep was really nice :)

Although I did see a few interesting and beautiful things, I had only seen a small part of Tokyo. Therefore, on Monday (which was a public holiday), I went to Asakusa and Akihabara. Asakusa is in the northeastern part of Tokyo, close to the Skytree (Japan's highest building) and around 2 hours from my dormitory.

Asakusa temple is a very famous Buddhist temple, and also the oldest temple in Tokyo (founded ~650 AD). In front of the main gate, there is a long "shopping mile" which once had many small, specialized shops. Today, the content of these shops has been replaced with tourist merchandise... Still, from far, a bit of the ancient flare and atmosphere is left. The main gate is decorated by very big painted lanterns and is around 30 m high. On the right, there is a stacked tower, in the center the main shrine.

What has struck me most can be seen on the left picture: the proximity of old, traditional buildings and modern constructions. This is impressive and beautiful at the same time. Japan has managed to modernize without destroying the cultural heritage, compared to some other countries I've visited, they did a great job!
The temple was bustling with people and very lively. On the side of the main building, there was a show with a trained monkey, which I found somewhat grotesque, but entertaining for the children. Asakusa is very beautiful and if you ever visit Japan, you should try to see it.

After having dinner at Asakusa, I went on to Akihabara, which is the place for electronics and anything related to manga and anime. I had been in the gigantic electronics store already, but only on one floor. The shop is truly enormous and has much more than only computers and cellphones. There is a whole floor dedicated to games and Japanese movies, as well as collectors' items (for model ships and the like).
After going to the main street, the most prominent aspect of the area are the large luminescent signs on the walls. There are many food stalls, comic book shops, pachinko halls and so-called maid cafes. The street is packed with people trying to sell stuff or trying to get you to play on their slot machines. I went into a pachinko hall, and apart from the fact that the slot machines are extremely dull, my memory is mainly of noise. These halls are insanely loud!
I went into a gaming arcade next, and there were many people playing all sorts of games. The most impressive one is a machine where you have to press the screen in certain places to a given rhythm. There were "professional" players there who came with special gloves and played one of these machines after the other, at a dazzling speed. I would guess they spend many evenings training for that...

The last thing I saw in Akihabara before returning home were these two Jeeps, driving around the place advertising the newest Battlefield game. It is common in Tokyo to drive around in fancy cars or trucks to advertise to the people on the streets. Haven't seen too much of this anywhere else until now.
Tuesday was back to the lab again. Or it should have been. Unfortunately, I seem to have caught a cold during my tours and was laying in bed with fever. Thankfully, I recovered quickly and was fit on Thursday. I started a new synthesis (the lamp for the photocatalytic reactions broke) of two ligands that I will use for reference purposes in the measurement of catalytic activity.

There is still more culture coming up, but I will post it at another time. I hope you enjoyed the read and the photos!! If you have any questions or want to express how bad my picture taking skills are, do not hesitate to comment ;)