Last Days in Tokyo
We arrived in Shanghai two days ago, and I immediately had the sense, à la Dorothy and Toto: We’re not in Tokyo anymore.
For one thing, I had to smuggle this post out of China. I use Blogger, a Google service, as well as gmail, Google Drive to store photos, Google Maps to get around and choose subway lines/routes, and ALL Google services are blocked in China, as well as Facebook and, especially devastating to Anna, Snapchat. I had to set up a Yahoo account to reach the outside world and Apple maps to navigate…. It’s the Great Firewall of China.
Our last days in Tokyo were filled with more shopping, but also some fun people watching, and I got to see at least one historical thing (left Anna at the hotel snapchatting and texting): I went to the Sensoji Buddhist Temple, an active temple with many worshippers coming and going. I snapped a few photos of people placing incense sticks in a big cauldron and bowing and praying and wafting the smoke onto themselves before I thought: Woops, Erin, this is super inappropriate; they are praying and you’re taking their picture!!
One other exciting thing for me (I bought two tickets but again Anna stayed behind in the hotel): I went to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. It was really fun and amusing: fans of the respective teams have distinctive chants, and many signs as well as the text on the “big screen” are in English, and they have cheerleaders between innings (cheerleaders in baseball?!), AND the home team is the Giants, with similar logo and same colors as my hometown Giants.
To smuggle out more photos at once, I used this collage thingy Anna showed me:
