11 May 2010
Edo Museum, Shopping in Ikebukuro, Cats
Today is my last day in Tokyo, and its raining.
What I really need to do is buy presents for various people, I am really bad at that, you would think this would be easy in Tokyo.
Before I go hunting for gifts I went to the Edo Museum in Ryoguku. This is a museum about the history of Tokyo and it is easily the best Museum I went to.
Inside as you can see below, are many models and full size recreations of different eras of Tokyo. The models especially were great.
There are also a heap of people dressed up who volunteer to give you a guided tour who speak great English (and I saw some speaking French and German as well). I didnt ask for one of these as there were plenty of groups using them and I was on my own. I listened in a bit in a few locations, they were very enthusiastic about whatever the subject.
After the museum, I went back to Ikebukuro, hoping to find some things to buy. I found a lunch as you can see below and generally wandered around as I do.
On the top floor of a Tokyu Hands store was a cat cuddling cafe. These are unique to Japan I think, I have seen a few of them. See below for pictures of cats.
Now I am planning what to do on my last night in Japan, remembering that its still a bit rainy. I am off to Hong Kong in the morning.
The outside of the absolutely enormous Edo Tokyo Museum.
That house thing is full sized and you can go in it, just like a regular house! Only this one is inside a concrete monolith of a building.
One of the models I mentioned. From what I can work out Tokyo has been destroyed compeltely 23 times in its history, by fire, flood, atomic bomb, godzilla, fire again, pokemon, fire, earthquake and im not sure what else.
The detail in the models is not captured particularly well in photos, its also very dark in here so I had to find things to place my camera on and set the timer, because flash photography causes eye cancer.
This is the best model. Its a recreation of the helicopter ride of the valkyries scene in Apocolypse Now, the movie where Marlon Brandon took over Japan and they sent the guy from 2 and a half men to kill him.
Just when you thought there were no more models, they put some under glass below you.
Japan has its own leaning tower of pisa. If you have been paying attention you will notice I have worn the same outfit for 10 days straight now.
Heres my lunch, from Choco-something. A ham and cheese crossaint thing, a chocolate crossaint thing, and a hot chocolate. It was not great.
I mentioned pod-world mech fps rts in games arcades before. Here is a picture of it which I failed to take last time.
Inside the games arcades are some of the more unusual vending machines, cause once you get close to a high score in hello-kitty-bash you cannot leave for days. I note they have custard filled pastry fish in a vending machine, if they had those in Australia I might be dead by now.
Studio Sega are booths where you shut yourself in and do im not sure what, but you get a disc at the end, or some photos, or something. However you must have a girl with you to go in, thats homophobic and sexist all at once.
Then I was at the cat cuddling cafe. This cats ears are too small for its fat face.
Theres about 20 or so cats 'available' at any time, but a lot of them are sleeping (until provoked). I got a sheet of paper warning me that cats are dangerous and will attack you if provoked, read on....
This is by far the coolest cat in the place. Unprovoked it attacked a small child. The cat handlers then tried to remove this cat from the public area (they keep the cats inside a little train whilst they have alone time), but this cat refused to go easy and put up a fight!
There are cats above your head in here as well, none of them jumped onto my head though.
Theres also holes in the walls for the cats to take shortcuts or sneak up on unsuspecting children. Children are the enemy of the cat, the cats seem to know this and act accordingly.
This gives you an idea of the general scene, theres 3 such rooms and its very clean and does not smell at all.