Thursday, July 17, 2008

Oh no - there goes Tokyo!

Despite going to bed at about 8pm local time last night (about 4am PST), both Stan and I awoke roughly every hour on the hour. On the bright side, this allowed us to communicate with some folks back home very early in our day.

Here, Stan-san presides over his new kingdom in complimentary hotel robe and towel (note the ball park just across the way).


We didn't have any definite plans for today, as we were originally expecting our books and posters to be delivered Thursday, only yesterday finding out they wouldn't be delivered until Friday.

We decided to join in on the recording of the weekly ForceCast, and through a myriad of coincidences that I won't detail here, we got in touch with our old pal Dan Curto from Rebelscum.com, just as he was leaving to join some of his colleagues on a ground tour of Tokyo. We quickly got ourselves invited, and were on our way!

We took a series of trains and subways to Asakusa - an open air market adjacent to a huge temple. Here's Stan, Stephanie, Anne, Tony, Dave and Dan waiting for our train to arrive.


No, that's not the Yakuza - that's Stan-san presiding over the open air market. For fear of ruining any surprises, I won't divulge what, if anything, was purchased herein.


The temple was very cool, including this 5-story pagoda.


Several types of offerings could be made at the Temple in Asakusa - here's John wafting in some smoke...


...curious about the markings on the incense being burned. Take a closer look...


John was also able to show off his limited Japanese writing skills, submitting wish sticks for he and Stanley in Japanese (much to the delight of the Temple staff).


We stopped for lunch at a nearby Japanese restaurant.


Stan ordered what was essentially chicken noodle soup, which came boiling in a huge bowl...


We did a bit more shopping after lunch, checked out a toy store where we found something for Steffan (of all people), and went to one more temple - Meiji Jingu in Shibuya.

We passed Tokyo Disneyland both coming and going today, and will likely try to check that out on one of our free days.

We ran into Pete Vilmur and Bonnie Burton of Lucasfilm on their way to dinner with our pal (and poster painter) Lawrence Noble and his kids.

We're both pretty beat after the day running around. We're very fortunate we managed to catch Dan as he was heading down to meet his party, and want to thank them for letting us tag along. It was a great second day, and we actually can say we've finally seen a bit of Tokyo.

2 comments:

Christine said...

So...a whole day in Tokyo and no Godzilla sightings. Too bad! Are you sure you spelled things right on that incense stick, John-san?

John Scoleri said...

I know where Godzilla is - perhaps we'll go on a hunt for him this afternoon...