Day Six - Edo Museum
Museum’s a silly looking word.
Set out with one purpose today, ok two. A) Get a nice hearty meal at Denny’s B) To find a bookstore that sold English books. Well the Denny’s part went…ok (see the pictures 
but apparently Kinokuniya at Takashiyama Times Square does sell English books. So I went there and got Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Neuromancer, and Lonely Planet’s Tokyo Pocket Guide. After I left there I stopped at a Starbucks (I swear the Chai Tea had a taste of seaweed in it, blech) and read the guide, settled on the Tokyo-Edo Museum and headed out there. First off, that building is MASSIVE. Apparently it’s meant to be as tall as the main castle keep was before the Kanto earthquakes, but something about it’s design just makes it feel oppressivly huge. Got my ticket and headed up to the main exhibition where I learned all about Edo/Tokyo (same city, changed names). The history stuff was pretty neat, you don’t generally hear about Japanese history and in a lot of ways it’s similar. Also interesting to me was how early western influences set in. From basically the Meiji emperor onward they were heavily influenced by western culture in some way or another. The WW2 section was neat too. Though they decided not to mention in all the plaques about how many people died in one bombing or another, that they started the war with us. I didn’t realize we’d bombed the crap out of Tokyo though, worse than Germany hit London by their accounts.
Left Edo to check out the Ryogoku Kokugikan (Sumo Stadium/Museum) but it appeared to be closed, found a neat little park next door though! Got some lunch, got my ticket for the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Nagoya and headed home.
Plan for tomorrow is to go to Harajuku to check out *drum roll* cosplayers! *giggles* Then I’ll be off to see Achim.
