Together in Tokyo – SUSHIBITS

We’re spending a week together in Tokyo before Marthe goes to Osaka to start her job!

The first day, we went together to the area where Wards work is located, Odaiba. Odaiba is near the ocean and harbours, and it’s a very wide and spacious neighbourhood with huge buildings and malls. We had beautiful weather!

Wards building:

Right next to the harbour!

We visited the huge mall called “Venus Fortress”, and the interior was completely in Italian style with fountains, pillars and even an artificial sky that turns dark in the evening!

Outside of the mall stands the 18 meter tall Gundam, a robot from a popular anime series.

When the weekend was over, so was the good weather and our time together. Ward works each day untill around 10 pm (those are Japanese working hours to get used to!!), so I went exploring on my own!

UENO

Ueno has a huge park that is surrounded by many of the top musea of Tokyo. A very nice place to visit! I went to the Tokyo National Museum to see some Japanese art and archaeology. The museum itself looks like a modern Japanse temple:

Beautiful kimonos:

Colourful prints:

This creepy mask was used in Noh, a traditional Japanese type of performing arts.

The garden behind the museum:

ASAKUSA

Near Ueno lies Asakusa. Here, one of the most famous temples of Tokyo: Senso-ji. It is very surprising to see such a beautiful structure amidst the concrete buildings, and it was very crowded there.

Almost reminded me of the temples in Kyoto and Nara! A five-storied pagoda:

Next to the temple you can see Tokyo’s newest and highest building: The Tokyo Skytree.

In the streets near the temple is “Kappabashi”, a shopping area specialized in kitchenware and plastic food. I don’t know why the area is called after the “Kappa”, which in Japanese folklore is a reptile like creature with water in its head, that farts a lot (really!), but there are a lot of kappa statues in kappabashi!