electric city, anime, tokyo city dome, and art

another stellar post yoga high. intended to blog yesterday, but was wore out from adventures, lots of walking, too hot bath and hot udon cooked by host mom. put me in a trance with all sorts of weird dreams, including friend having strange pcp/coke habit! "but i only snort 6 spoons a day!" what?? i have NO idea where that came from. i haven't even been watching tv or movies, so i don't know the influence of a dream like that. she also stole my man! who was dancing naked on the bed in a high rise building in tokyo for all to watch! dreams are funny, indeed. but i'm not the kind of person who tries to figure out the meaning of life through them, because i believe they are just stimulus in gumbo form, and your subconscious trying to figure it all out. the stimulus comes from dna, life, tv, other people's stories and the imagination. you can choose to find meaning in them just like a piece of art, but there is no real answer, so why bother? whenever i travel, i have bizarre dreams, often in blazing colors, especially in india, which makes sense because that is the strongest stimulus over there-color to the extreme.

yesterday's excursion was fun. after teaching, zen and i had some coffee at the local starbucks (i know, i boycott them, but sadly, they have the best coffee in tokyo and the only place that has regular american coffee with real cream-i hate lattes) and the place was filled with obnoxious loud westerners. we scoped out the day-onto the ginza line and into akihabara-land of electronics and anime. i had never seen so many of these stores in my life. unfortunately i am not schooled in anime, so it did not have the same affect on me as someone who is a fan. i could not count the amount of anime stores that there were. and so big, colorful and crazy. almost scarey. i have to admit many of these furry cute giant "things" can be very scarey indeed.

we began our journey at the tokyo anime centre, and was quite glad zen was there to lead the way. i don't know how anyone finds anything when they are always hiding on an upper floor in any number of high rises. we began to look inside when an american with a dopey grin on his face asked us if we had seen the akihabara theatre. i thought he was asking for directions, but he looked like he just had a good massage, and was telling us to go there. oh, ok. it was the 3D animation centre. we went in and they gave us the glasses. and a tour in japanese. we explored all the latest technologies in this type of technology. there was a 3 dimensional kitchen that looked like the cooks were inside the flatscreen making food in the neighboring restaurant, a giant map of tokyo that you can turn, zoom and navigate just by barely touching the screen, all in matrix style 3D, models being made and put into the ovens, and the coolest, an electronic hologram of a girl behind a desk that you could touch and she reacts, change her clothes and also her language. this was cool and creepy, because the future is bright for entertainment. talk about scarey movies that are holograms that can actually react to the audience! wow.
there wasn't a lot more except life size models of all the latest anime figures, drawings, and lots of things to buy.

we went to explore the streets, so many anime and manga (comics) shops, many of the hentai type (comic porn) and many floors housing little sexy anime outfits to wear for your partner, as well as many dvds, etc. interesting, indeed. and an entirely differnt world from the one i am familiar with. i was too shy to go into the electronics stores because it was just overkill. ipod nano for 2800 yen! (thats about 23 bucks!) so if your in the market for electronics, this is definitely the place to go. we went to a cool store that had a massive key chain collection, many sushi ones that looked totally real, and gyoza! but were in the 20 dollar price range, so i took a pass. in fact, i did not spend a penny on anyting excpet for food. zen suggested a tandon place, japanese fried fast food. similar to tempura, sitting on top of rice. simple, fast, cheap, delicious. and dozens of businessmen sucking it down in 10 minutes flat (really-i timed some of them).

we walked to the nicholai cathedral, a russian orthodox church constructed in the late 19th century, with a magnificent onion dome. i always find it strange to find catholic churches in the most unlikely of places. and on to the tokyo wonder site, which was closed upon arriving until mid afternoon. i was interested in the giant parachute carnival rides in the horizon and so we went on to tokyo dome (the big egg), home of the yomiuri giants, the most popular baseball team in japan. surrounding the dome is tokyo city amusement park, with rides such as a standard roller coaster, water boat coaster, massive ferris wheel, and the 13 doors haunted house, where you are given a key to open a door and discover a murder. the place is very kitch, with really scarey baseball restaurants specializing in giant racks of ribs and nachos-the japanese version you do not want to touch. then back to tokyo wonder site, a gallery promoting new art exhibits. we saw an instillation called "awesome" by dasuke nagaoaka of a film of a hand drawing and erasing a man sitting at a desk, with a mural of the man on the walls, and his books and desk in the room. it was very interesting and made me wanting more art. the art here is so interesting and different from what's at home, i want to explore modern museums, one called watari museum of contemporary art outside of shibuya, if i have the courage to try to find it alone. there's a warhol exhibit there right now (!!)