Yuri Revolution, Day 5

April 13th, 2005

Finally! A full day of walking around to see *stuff*.

Today (Day 6) I have a business meeting mid-day, so my day is pretty much shot for fun. P and the gang will be shrine-hunting in the sunshine, and maybe with luck, we’ll manage Mandarake tonight.

But back to yesterday….

It was super cold and rainy, so Tokyo Tower was right out. We decided to head to Asakusa to the Senso-ji, because there’s so much to see there. And I took, for me, alot of pictures, which will probably bore you to death, so here’s just a few:

This is the Nakamisedori – its the road that runs upt to the main Temple, and has a bazillion little overpriced knicknack shops:

Here is a picture of a shrine to Benten, the goddess of fortune and wisdom:

And here’s a cool waterfall set-up, crossed by a tidy little bridge, with a koi pond on the other side:

P and Wing and I ended up in an udon place for lunch- it was good, but a little heavy. A bit miraculously, we managed to find everyone else again (for the second time – bizarrely, we all ended up at the bathroom at the same time….) and we took a long, long, looong walk out to Kappabashi, the restaurant supply and plastic food district.

I want to digress here for a sec. Apparently the only “in” color for school uniforms this year is navy blue. I have seen a handful of green, grey or beige uniforms – but scores of navy blue. I have no particular interest in school uniforms…I just noticed the preponderance of navy blue.

Anyway, at the Kappabashi, we learned that plastic food is very expensive. Vicky, if you read this, we got you your gyoza. You’re welcome.

Expensive plastic crabs:

Shiny colorful expensive plastic food:

Two utterly random things we saw while walking:

We ended up on the Inarichou, which has alot of stores that sell religious goods. We split up here, because we were all tired and cold and needed a break.

P and I went back to the hotel, I napped, she read. At 5 we decided to walk out for dinner, so we called everyone in the hotel and met at 6. We wandered Ikebukuro, spent more money at Toranoana, then wandered behind P who wanted curry and for all of us to sit together. We ended up at Sunshine 60 in the food court, where they all had curry and I ate a salad.

About 9 I crashed again and we went back to the room where I was asleep by 10. I’m really annoyed about how badly I’m handling this trip. I was so good about not having caffeine before I left and eating right and exercising, and I’m falling apart worse this time than last. I wish I had some energy! I feel like I’m half ready to sleep *all* the time here and it’s been almost a week already. I really didn’t count on feeling this way for so long.

Anyway, enough whining. Today I meet with the new editor of Yuri Shimai and Rica to see if we can develop some sort of relationship. It will certainly be interesting, if nothing else!

4 Responses

  1. Anonymous says:

    The pictures are great! It’s nice to see snippets of what it looks like.

    – Stacy

  2. Anonymous says:

    Erica, you need a big fat beer to cure that jet lag. Have some beer, it’s the Japanese way!

    –Dany

  3. Anonymous says:

    Hi Erica-san
    I will see you at the event on Saturday noon.
    But I can’t attend all time.
    If you have a time, I want to meet you ( and P!) before that!
    (Friday morning, noon or Saturday morning)
    I will very happy if you give an e-mail about that to me!

    —Masako

  4. Anonymous says:

    Koi! They’re so pretty… and such personable fish, in my experience. —Lianne

Leave a Reply to Anonymous