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I went to the convention center this morning. The convention center is on a weird, square, artificial island in Tokyo Bay filled with giant structures (malls, amusement parks, a scale model of Hong Kong, etc.) connected by monorail.

From a distance, the convention center (Big Sight) looks a lot like a giant Voltron-style robot, which happens to be appropriate today.

I don’t know what this is an add for, but I love these eggs!

Back behind the shrines and things there was a stand of giant, old cedar trees.  As I was taking pictures of the trees a stranger offered to take a shot of me, which is above.

The reason I was photographing the trees was that they were all tied to one another (and the ground, and other things) with giant steel cables.  Maybe to compensate for erosion, but lots of little thumb-sized sprouts were cabled too.  The dryads must hate that.

Yesterday I visited Nikko, which is a tourist town a few hours outside of Tokyo full of shrines, reliquaries and the like. This photo is of the train cleaning crew who hovered by the door waiting for the last passengers to exit so that they could rush in and vacuum before the train filled up again.

Here is what it looked like out the train window.  It took a long long time for Tokyo to open up into the countryside, but it did happen, eventually.

The next set of photos are from a temple and shrine complex, ‘temples’ being Buddhist and ‘shrines’ being Shinto. Due to lack of language skills, I don’t know all the facts, but the shrines seem to mostly house Tukogawa shoguns — their spirits and, in some cases, their caskets as well.

I’m sure that I’m not grouping the Buddhist and Shinto photos properly. Usually Shinto architecture is distinctly stark, but the shrines here were very ornate.

This bell made the second-best sound that I’ve heard so far this week.  Click here for a movie of the bell ringer.

The decorations are largely gold leaf and lacquer. The lacquer is painted in layer after layer, one color at a time, and then each layer is carved away to reveal the color below.

These monkeys were heavily photographed, so I joined in. The monkeys are part of a series of panels showing the stages of (monkey) life, from birth to parenthood.

Boy, this page is taking a long time to load, isn’t it?

And, at last, a short climb brings us to Gold Leaf Headquarters.

There was a docent in this temple who gave a long spiel which I couldn’t follow. And then he performed a completely surprising magic trick…

The interior of the building (no photos allowed) was rectangular and full of statues and half-walls. The docent clacked a woodblock here and there in a few places (nothing up my sleeves…) and then stood in a special spot and clacked again, and the whole building rang like a bell. He did it a few more times so we could be sure we weren’t hallucinating. I have no idea if that’s something that works by design or was discovered after the fact — the ‘lucky’ spot wasn’t in the center or in a marked place, or anything that would suggest intent.

Throughout the complex were signs pointing to the ‘sleeping cat’. At last, it appeared.

I have the feeling that every American in Tokyo takes the same photos: crowds, and shiny things.

We got out the door early this morning (6AM) to check out the fish market. This is the place where the night’s fish catch is auctioned off to wholesalers all over the country. 6AM turned out to be too late to see the tuna auction, but we caught the aftermath:

I took many photos trying to convey the vastness of this building, but there’s no way to capture it without a blimp. I have no idea how large it actually is, but here are some statistics are on wikipedia. Everything vanished off into the distance. I’m not clear on why rubes like us are allowed to walk around in there, but the forklift drivers were kind enough not to run us over.

I didn’t take any photos of the whale-butcher — my guess is he probably gets more attention than he really cares for.

And, a technological miracle unfolds: this place does not stink! So much so that there are restaurants immediately next door where we were able to eat a fish breakfast without suffering any misgivings.

I asked Aric if this poster was advertising a Pro Wrestling match between pets. He looked at it for a while and said, “You took a picture from the back side, so the writing is all backwards. But, that’s what it looks like.”

Let no one say that I have not lived. For I have been to Ikebukuro Gyoza Stadium!

The guidebook consistently referred to this place as a ‘food theme park’ and it was, in fact, inside a larger spookhouse-type them park. There were 23 different gyoza makers, with posters everywhere reporting their dumpling stats (“17cm wide and weighing in at 23 grams…”). A couple of the dumpling-makers gave me little cards so I feel like I was supposed to vote somewhere, about something.

Of course, I was only able to eat 3 plates, so I wouldn’t be a fair judge.

Aric maintains that in Tokyo no one eats unless they’re sitting down.

It is also the case that there is almost nowhere to sit. I took this photo in Tokyo central station because these thingies were the closest I’d come in a long time to finding a place to rest my feet.