{"id":21845,"date":"2026-01-29T22:46:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T21:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=21845"},"modified":"2026-03-21T18:14:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:14:57","slug":"daily_3984_-_japan_day_2_-_tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2026\/01\/29\/daily_3984_-_japan_day_2_-_tokyo\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily: 3984 – Japan day 2 – Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Our day started with the same challenge as yesterday: where to eat our convenience store breakfast. There was a park on the map, very close to us. Surely a park will have a bench, we thought. Nope. We ended up eating our egg sandwiches and rice balls on a concrete edge. And it was cold. We will need a better plan for our future breakfasts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the morning we visited Ota Memorial Museum of Art, which hosts a large collection of woodblock prints. They rotate which works from their collection are on display at any time. Right now, the theme was “Ojisan” or “uncle”, meaning “middle-aged man”.<\/p>\n

Many of the exhibited prints were from famous series, like “The fifty-three stations of the Tokaido”<\/a> etc.
\nThe “uncles” were never the focal point of any of the works, but they were everywhere. Walking, sunning themselves, carrying things, smoking a pipe.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the museum – not even in the foyer. The only exception was the museum shop, which had a wonderful range of tenugui<\/i>, printed cotton towels. I bought several, even though I have no idea what I will do with them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For lunch – udon noodles at – Udon Iroha. The restaurant actually offered paper aprons to guests, which I said no to. Maybe I was cheating when I sometimes bit off the longest noodles, but nobody was watching.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After lunch we spent a few hours browsing various kinds of shops in Harajuku. The vintage clothes shops were impressively organized and curated. A metre of short, plaid skirts; two metres of corduroy shirts. Kimonos, yukatas, haori jackets in all colours.<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

Ingrid had a list of shops with toys and pop culture doodads to visit. I discovered yet again that Tokyo does not like people just hanging around. There was never any place to sit when I was waiting for her.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Right next to Shibuya is Meiji Jingu shrine, built to honor Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken.<\/p>\n

I liked the giant torii<\/i> gate on the way through the park to the shrine. It looks like each pillar is a single tree trunk.<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

I read somewhere that, back when the shrine was being designed, there were intense debates about what the appropriate architectural style would be for a shrine erected for a deified emperor, since there was no real precedent. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Emperor Meiji apparently wrote 100,000 poems during this life. I presume that these are some of them. I do wish someone had spent at least a little time on some English-language signage. Perhaps even a few translations of the poems? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Close to the temple itself, there was the Emperor’s garden. Even though its more spectacular parts (like the iris garden) are nothing to look at in late winter, I appreciated its design, with winding paths and bonsai trees.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tokyo at night looked exactly as colourful and neon-bright as movies had made me expect.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our day started with the same challenge as yesterday: where to eat our convenience store breakfast. There was a park on the map, very close to us. Surely a park will have a bench, we thought. Nope. We ended up eating our egg sandwiches and rice balls on a concrete edge. And it was cold. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,800,768,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-ingrid_johanna","category-japan","category-photography-2","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21845"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22123,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21845\/revisions\/22123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}