30 October 2023
Pray for the repose of the souls of the ducks
Hamarikyu gardens
Welcome to a rest day. Where I just casually stroll around for 6.5 hours straight without stopping with no plan.
I woke up sore as I expected, but nothing cures soreness like a long walk, and right now most of the soreness is gone, so hopefully I am good to go for another proper adventure tomorrow. Of course I am still in the window of will I get covid from the plane flight or not, where my chronic hypochondria mistakes dehydration and joint soreness from running up a mountain for sure signs of impending respiratory failure. But I digress.
My stroll this morning was south, through Ginza before it opened, to a park that I think I intended to go to on the last trip but refused to because of the $3 entry fee. Today I paid the $3. The park was nice enough, there are nicer ones around for free, but I guess the good thing about a fee is that it was almost empty. So I took my mask off and breathed in some non filtered air. In case anyone is wondering, mask usage in Tokyo by my estimation has returned to pre covid levels. I still wear one except when hiking, or in an abandoned park, it helps prevent me from being detected by the facial recognition AI devices looking for foreigners planning on going to Shibuya on Halloween.
Payback is a bitch. Taiwan has now invaded Japan. This is a famous bookstore brand from Taiwan.
The flipside of that, Mitsukoshi stores are all over Taiwan, which is somewhat more surprising that they lasted beyond the occupation.
Japanese police station. We really need a few of these police posts in central Melbourne these days.
Here is the entrance of Hamarikyu gardens. It was built Goku, the feudal emperor of the ancient land of Wakoku in 1100 4D.
Great weather today, tricky light for this crappy cameras low dynamic range. Nice bridges.
I climbed the highest peak of the park.
A bit more lake.
The flower garden was in the process of being replanted, it is generally much larger, but still large enough for me to make it look large in this photo. I had to politely wait for that girl trying to photograph butterflies to stop bending over.
The title of today's update is a direct quote from this sign. There really is a monument for the souls of dead ducks.
I reflected on the tragic loss of millions of dead ducks by staring at the reflections of these buildings.
The guy you can see here was taking photos of this, so I did to. That is a bullet train overhead.
Tokyo station. I do not actually need to collect tickets, the QR code from my online purchase is the ticket. Actually it is more complex than that. When you buy online tickets these days, you can choose to generate a QR code or not. If you generate a QR code, you cannot collect a ticket, as you already generated it. If you dont generate the QR code, you can go to the machines in the station to generate the QR code. At least I hope that is correct.
I treated myself to a 7-eleven lunch of salad, sandwich and tea. Very delicious, and cheap! I was excited at how cheap lunch was. Tonight I will go somewhere new.