Museum Day

Oops, I took a few days off there when I promised a post everyday, hope you don't mind. I was so busy not blogging. Today, though, I have a nice action packed post to make up for it. Well, it's as action packed as a day of visiting museums can be, but don't worry because there's a few nice surprises.

We wouldn't normally fill an entire day of vacation with multiple museums, but since it was New Years holiday, this was the only day I was there and museums were open. Therefore the motto was lets museum it up.

First was the Tokyo national museum, a popular attraction with a great collection of historical items, art, and many things samurai related.

Inside, I was most impressed by the amount of wood block prints they had, or ukiyo-e. This one is 'Landscape in the Snow' by Utagawa Kunitora.

Next is one of my favorite pieces I saw, 'Song of Everlasting Sorrow' which was made in the 17th century.

We also saw a variety of samurai swords, uniforms and other items. One of the most impressive of them was this piece of armor that lasted from the 17th century.

One of the nearby museum buildings displayed artifacts from various Asian countries such as China, Korea, and then artifacts from Egypt and the Middle East. This painted food bowl from Iran I found impressive due to the fact that it's from the early 5th millenium B.C. That's pretty old.

Since we were on such a museum high, we wanted to keep it going and headed to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. This museum covers the history of Japan and Tokyo during the Edo-period which was in the 18th and 19th century while Tokyo was still called Edo. This museum was also an architectural marvel because it was huge and was up on stilts. This also meant that we got to ride on these sweet escalators about 6 stories to get into the museum.

Inside, the museum had a very open feel. There are two levels of exhibits, and upon entering there was live music down just one floor in front of this historic looking building. These guys were really good too, two played the drums and then one played this stringed instrument. I'm not sure what it is called.

One of my favorite exhibits here was where they displayed how a Ukiyo-e, or woodblock print, was made. This picture shows the wood blocks at the bottom, the impression that each wood block would leave on paper, and then at the top the composite of all the wood block impressions. Really neat!

There were loads of historical artifacts and some set up for photo-opps. This is a good one with Dave carrying some water buckets.

There was so much more in this museum that I am not going to show pictures of here, so I think you'll have to go check it out yourself. The Edo-Tokyo Museum was definitely one of my favorite experiences on the trip. Here's a shot of the museum so you can see how it's posted up on giant pillars.

The museum was right next a Sumo stadium, but being New Years, there weren't any matches. We did, however catch two wrestlers while they were in the subway station, another highlight of my trip.

That night's dinner was yet another highlight, where we went and had shabu-shabu beef. I'll talk more about that in a post about food in a few days. We also went and checked out some of the entertainment in Shinjuku, near our hotel. We visited a pachinko parlor. I don't know if anyone reading is familiar with pachinko, but you basically put some money into a machine and then launch a bunch of tiny metal balls down a hole and lose all of your money. To be honest, I didn't really understand the game while playing. The machine, pictured here looks kind of like a washing machine decked out with some gnarly lights.
That was definitely one of my favorite days in Tokyo. We did go to check out a karaoke room after the pachinko, but it was ridiculously expensive for even just a half hour, so it didn't really seem worth it. Bummer, yes, but we had a good enough experience with a singing room in Korea.

Check back soon because I'm planning to write three more posts about Japan, including my final day, one about food, and one about souveniers.