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Japan Day 9

Posted by Mark | Filed under Travel

This morn­ing was another swel­ter­ing day and after a short hop on the train; we walked up to Osamu Tezuka Pro­duc­tions. When you first step off the street towards their door; there’s a mar­ble (maybe gran­ite) sta­tus of Astro Boy. Then you walk inside and imme­di­ately you’re sur­rounded by mer­chan­dise, mostly from Astro Boy but also from some of Tezuka’s other series, such as Princess Knight. Then it was up the stairs and we split up with half of us tour­ing of the offices while the other half watched a video. I went on the tour and the won­der­ful peo­ple there let me video tape it; so I won’t talk about it here. Then we went back to the wait­ing area and watched some of Tezuka’s ani­ma­tion work while the other group go the tour. It was a very nice envi­ron­men­tal work with no words set to one of Tchaikovsky’s operas. Then they brought in one of Tezuka’s for­mer assis­tants and he gave a short pre­sen­ta­tion about what it was like to be an assis­tant. I was still suf­fer­ing from the heat, so my fried brains couldn’t think of a ques­tion before the pre­sen­ta­tion was over. On the other hand, at least I wasn’t sleep­ing with my head on the table through the pre­sen­ta­tion.

After the pre­sen­ta­tion, we left Osamu Tezuka Pro­duc­tions and headed for Asasuka. It was a beau­ti­ful area with a large mar­ket lead­ing up to the shrine. We did a bunch of group pic­tures at the entrance to the area and then headed up. The shrine was gor­geous and when I get back to the USA; I’ll see about post­ing some pic­tures. I wish we’d had more time to check out the mar­ket area as there looked to be a lot of really cool stuff in a small area, but the chil­dren had been whin­ing again and we cut that part of the day a bit short. Plus P was absolutely wasted by the heat and we had to go acti­vate our JR passes.

I noticed that I was get­ting a bit snap­pish with the kids and when AWelkin men­tioned that we’d be fin­ish­ing the day in Tokyo sta­tion; I asked if Tokyo Tower was nearby. She said it was and so I asked if maybe her & Bryon would like to go with me to see it. She was hes­i­tant about it and I said I under­stood but that I’d been hop­ing to have an evening with my kind of geek. This ended up being a sign to AWelkin that I needed a san­ity check and she changed their plans to go with me.

We ended up wan­der­ing around for quite a while to find some din­ner. Even­tu­ally we set­tled on the Japan­ese ver­sion of an Ital­ian restau­rant. Bryon had lasagna, while AWelkin and I each went for a per­sonal pizza. Hers was some bizarre seafood thing while mine was Mixed Pizza and came with a vari­ety of veg­eta­bles and some rather undercooked/fatty (by Amer­i­can stan­dards) bacon. After din­ner more walk­ing and AWelkin ask­ing for direc­tions a cou­ple of times; we made it to Tokyo Tower. It was amaz­ing! Espe­cially since we got there at just about sun­set, the view was just spec­tac­u­lar. Again, I’ll see about post­ing some pic­tures when I get back to the USA.

After that extremely long day and a really nice evening, I was feel­ing very tired but much more sane. More about Japan tomorrow!

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