Japan Day 11 (jū ichi)

Today we woke up to an unusual sound. It seemed like there was some sort of march going on right outside our building. Looking out we couldn't see anything at first, and then I saw a few trucks with loudspeakers on top drive by on a nearby street. A few people from the apartment came up to fix our dryer in the morning and I asked the lady with them what the ruckus was outside. She seemed kind of embarassed and apologized if it was annoying us, but I just wanted to know what it was. She said today was the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki (Aug 9th, 1945) and those people outside were right wingers that are pissed off about the whole thing. I think they want a return to Imperial rule, a more militaristic Japan, maybe an Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the whole nine yards. She also said traffic was snarled down by a major intersection near us.

Well of course this just intrigued me; who doesn't like a good political protest in a foreign land? I got one in Buenos Aires, why not Tokyo?

Well, I knew something was different because when I got to the bottom of our hill there were two cops, instead of the normal one.


I should say that it's probably not usual to have cops sitting around your block on a regular basis, but we are right next to the Russian embassy, so I think that's why they're there. There are little police boxes that sit at regular intervals around the embassy area, normally with just one bored looking officer.

When I rounded the corner I saw a different kind of policeman with much cooler looking gear.


It's about 1000 yards from our corner to this busy intersection and they were placed about every 50 yards or so. They would block off access to our street whenever the loudspeaker trucks would drive by. Guess they didn't want them bugging the Ruskies.



I walked down by the entrance to the Russian embassy to see what was going on. It appeared there was a line of cops and only about 3 or 4 guys pestering the Russians. Maybe they were crank calling them on that little call box by the door.


Our main goal today (my secondary one, following getting shots of all the cops) was to take the kids to the National Children's Castle in Shibuya so they could have a little fun-time out of the apartment, and meet some Japanese friends. Here's the gang on the subway:


After a long hot walk from Shibuya Station, we finally arrived.



Doesn't she look guilty? Lucy had just knocked down this little boy's tower he was building....accidently of course.


Lucy and Charlie both had a fun time listening to the band. And Lucy even got to bang on some drums!


We made it back to Roppongi with little fuss, and then we spied the first Mos Burger we'd seen all trip! We knew what was for dinner tonight. We also stopped in a store called Don Quixote, which appears to sell everything known to man. I even found a pair of Kentaro's favorite socks:


As I said, we finished up the day with some Mos Burgers. Mmmmmmm good. That's a Mos Cheese Burger with onion rings(モスチーズバーガー in case you were wondering). It's got chili and a big ass tomato on it. Tastes vaguely like a Tommy's cheeseburger, but slightly different.



Mo Pics