Japan Day 2 - Museum, Shabu-Shabu, and Taiko!

We were up early on day 2 thanks to jet lag, and we couldn't get back to sleep so we started out ahead of schedule. Our plan was to go to the Tokyo national museum, which didn't open until 9:30am, but since it was in Ueno park we went to the park and walked around until opening.

Once again it was raining, and I was glad to have our umbrellas so that we didn't have to let the rain stop our exploring. We walked to an interesting shrine with what I would describe as a large-scale bonsai tree (clearly made to grow into a circle, but normal tree sized obviously). There was some neat art in the shrine, and more importantly no rain through the roof, so we spent a few minutes there before moving on.

     

Down the hill from the shrine was a large lake that was absolutely covered in lotus leaves. We were a little too late for the blossoms, but there were a lot of pods to check out, and the leaves were almost as tall as we were off the water.  There is also another shrine in the middle of the lake, which was neat to check out. The rain lightened up and even stopped a few times, so it was a nice morning stroll. From there we made our way back up towards the museums. We ended up having to take refuge under the awning of an under-construction Starbucks for a little bit when the rain came back with a vengeance - this was the day the Typhoon hit in Kyoto, so I think Tokyo was getting a little bit of the weather from that even in the morning.

The museum held a nice variety of traditional Japanese art and artifacts in its main hall, which was the only hall we visited as we had lunch plans. There were some ancient artifacts from the Jomon period which I recognized from my time in Hokkaido, a cool selection of swords and accessories like hand guards and scabbards, a ton of calligraphy and brush art, and a good number of textiles as well. It was a little bit of everything, which was great.

From the museum, we headed back to Ginza to meet up with an old conversation partner of mine, Ayano, and her daughter Haru. We had suggested shabu-shabu, which is thinly sliced meat and vegetables cooked in boiling broth/water at your table, and she certainly did not disappoint in her restaurant selection. We had a private room, which was perfect for her 2 year old daughter since she could get bored and check out the room a bit, and we had an impressive selection of foods to cook in the broth. The meat was Wagyu beef, very fatty, which seems to be the only kind of beef they have in Japan (fatty, not Wagyu). There were good vegetables, some tofu, and even some mochi, which I must say I prefer cold to hot. At the end they brought some fantastic ramen noodles to have in the now very flavorful broth, followed by some desert.

Since lunch took a few hours, we had only an hour or so to mill around in Ginza before a Taiko drumming show we had tickets for. We decided to kill time by visiting the Mikimoto pearl store, and ogling at all the beautiful pearls there in every color you can imagine. There were a few pendants that were tempting, but nothing seemed exactly right so we did end up leaving empty handed (maybe someday I'll own a Mikimoto pearl strand, but that'd have to be a pretty special occasion indeed). From there we went to the theater to take our seats for the show.

The drum show we saw was called Mangekyo, by Drum Tao. They are a Taiko group that has toured internationally, but is currently doing a home stint in Tokyo and Kyoto. I had seen an ad for the show on Facebook of all places, and, after watching a few videos, picked up tickets and was glad I did. The show was a more modern and theatrical take on Taiko, and also included other traditional Japanese instruments including traditional flutes, Shamisen (a lute of sorts), and Koto (horizontal harp-like instrument). It also included dance and pole-spinning type acrobatics, and was a great time. Luckily they allowed pictures for the final act so I have a few!

  

   

After the show it was pretty windy, again probably because of the Typhoon making its way across the island to the southwest of us, but luckily no rain, so it was a pretty nice walk back to the hotel. We grabbed a late dinner of tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) before turning in for the night.