Art installations from the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi. Top to bottom: 1000 Legs by Kobayashi Fumiko Eurasia (on wall) and Inujima Project (on floor), by Yanagi Yukimori. Eurasia is made of ant farms. Model of the SS Go For Future, by Endo Ichiro; Ichiro is apparently building a sea-worthy version of this scale model.
To begin with, Susan has a cold. Nothing dramatic; just standard upper respiratory stuff, and probably to be expected after changing twelve hours of time zone in the space of a week. So we decided not to set an alarm to go to the fish market at 5am, but thought we might go if we woke up at the right hour. We did wake up shortly after four, but by the time we got down to the waterfront at 5:15, all of the tickets to observe the tuna auction were gone. Allegedly, the rest of the fish market
Architecture of the National Art Centre Tokyo. Very cool.
October 10th is World Day against the Death Penalty. Japan still employs capital punishment. Although they don’t use it as often as other countries, the manner in which they carry out death sentences is rather shocking. Prisoners on death row are kept in solitary confinement, prevented from communicating with friends and family via visits or letters, and they often receive only a few hours notice before their execution is carried out. So we learned at the small exhibit put on yesterday by the EU Mission to Japan, as part of a larger event lobbying the Japanese government on this issue.
Early morning views of Tokyo from the rooftop of the apartment where we are staying.
It is 6am in the Arisugawa-No-Miya Memorial Park. A man plays a flute and the music floats over the whole park. It has the feel of a daily ritual to it. A woman sits by the pond below him, reading. I wonder if she seeks his music out.
Sushi dinner at a low-key place in Roppongi.
After a fitful night of half-sleep, we ventured out into the city late morning. We headed to Ginza on the subway, with plans to walk from there to the Imperial Palace after lunch. We found a small, cheap restaurant for lunch, where we succeeded in ordering by pointing to what the other people were eating. Delicious grilled mackerel with a miso soup, rice, and cold green tea. We then stopped into the Sony building and played with the toys in their showroom, before heading over to Mitsukoshi, a large department store in the vein of Harrods. The food halls (three
Arisugawa-No-Miya Memorial Park, near our accommodation in Tokyo.
View from our window: Europa House, Tokyo. 11:30, 09 October 2013