Hail, Flowing Fount of Sentiment

On the way to Meiji Jinguu, we stopped by a Lawson's for some snacks, and I bought a drink and couple of boxes of chips promoting the new Evangelion film series. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance is the second in a film series called Rebuild of Evangelion. Once I'd paid for them, the cashier lady asked me to wait a moment, then she went back to the shelf and brought back a Shinji folder, saying "Purestenoo desu." Which was cool--free folder. Even though Shinji's kind of a whiny...Not complaining, though: free folders are good.

Once we entered Meiji Jinguu, we saw (with the aid of maps) that the shrine proper was actually a ways into the wooded area, which gave us yet another beautiful walk in a park. As we approached the shrine, we saw a line of Shinto priests, and realized a religious ceremony was starting--a couple of people got videos I believe--I'll ask someone for permission to post their video. I'm not sure if the ceremony was for anything in particular, though. The shrine was quite crowded, so it may have been something special, or it could have just been busy because it was Golden Week.

Meiji Jinguu is reportedly Tokyo's best shrine--probably not a bad assessment, considering it's in the largest wooded area in Tokyo. The shrine was built to commemorate the souls of Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shoken, whose tombs are actually in Kyoto. The forest was actually created, the trees donated by people from all over Japan and overseas, when it was decided a shrine dedicated to the late Emperor and Empress be built in Tokyo in 1920.

(That is, the souls of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken are considered kami, though Hirohito publicly repudiated the idea that the Japanese Emperor was divinity by descent from Amaterasu. Then again, this seems to have been a statement made more for outsiders than the Japanese themselves. Still, I don't believe Emperor Shouwa was posthumously deified...)

Just opposite the main shrine building, there were some beautiful ikebana pieces lined up along one corner of the square.

Here are a couple of waka, Japanese poems of 31 syllables, written by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken (as provided by a nifty pamphlet from the shrine. I just though they were rather beautiful):









Even while yielding/
To its container's form/
Water too can pierce/
Entirely through the hardest rock;/
Such is its enduring strength.

 







By self-reflection/
And questioning our own hearts/
We should then perceive/
The proper path to pursue/
And nothing would confuse us 

Oh the world is in tune on a spring afternoon...

(No pidgeons to poison here, really.)

We took a break from the urban view heading down towards the Meiji Jinguu area by taking a detour through a Shinjuku Chou, a beautiful little park (even with the small groups of homeless men in the corners.)

 A couple of good portraits, I think...(First is Sabrina, second is Margot.)

Guillaume, Maxim, Momo-chan, Sun Young, and So Rim

(Maxim, I believe, took this shot with my camera for me)

 

Elliot getting a nice shot of the practicing stunt-bicyclists...

 

And eventually we left the park and found the road again...

 

Itty bitty turtles at a pet shop we passed by

All quiet in Shinjuku? What the...

We woke up bright and early Sunday morning at 9 am--well, some of us woke up brighter and earlier than others, namely the Korean girls. They always woke up hours before the rest of us, to complete their morning rituals of applying multiple lotions and make up to their faces. Me, I just rolled out of bed, washed my face, got dressed and made sure my camera bag was packed. See, we had to be out of the hostel from 11 am until 4 pm. It was weird; kind of like a reverse curfew.

We first walked around in Shinjuku, the epitome of "modern" Tokyo: business, government, commercial and entertainment center all in one. First we saw the endless camera shops, then wandered through skyscrapers and skyscrapers. Some very interesting architecture to be found here.

 

And here is where they keep the nuclear wessels

After a while, people started showing up, but before then...pretty quiet Sunday morning on the streets of Shinjuku, Tokyo

A very convenient maneki neko. Usually they're actual paper mache, ceramic, or plastic statuettes...

 Here is Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building #1. I think. In any case, we took the elevator up to the 40-something-th floor to the observatory in the left tower. Very nice round view of the city--the only obstruction being the other tower.

 

The wooded area is Meiji Jinguu shrine and Yoyogi-kouen park are--we shall see in closer detail soon

On really clear days it's said that you can see Mt. Fuji from this view.

This is where it was supposed to be, but...too smoggy, so I had to draw it in.