Ueno, Akihabara, & Shibuya

Day 3 in Tokyo: (PICTURES HERE)
Another early morning. Having messed up & retained our jet lag, I wake up at 5:45am with only 3 hours of sleep. I finish Transmission by Hari Kunru (I'll give a book review later) & write our last blog posting.

Ueno Park:
It is rainy all day today, so our trip to the Tokyo National Museum consists of a flock umbrellas entering & exiting the subway, then making a beeline for the museum in the center of the park. We walk past the Louvre exhibit & its queue gives us an idea of what lies ahead at the Tokyo National Museum. The line is at least 75 yards long, so we skip the museum & explore the Park instead. We find a few shrines, a large lake filled with lily pads & erect lotus leaves, & a stadium, where a live rock band is performing or practicing in front of a handful of people.

Each tree is delicately trimmed so that the smaller branches at the bottoms of each larger branch, so each tree looks like a green umbrella. With the continuous drizzle & hazy sky, walking under the greenery of Ueno Park was breathtaking.

Our ryokan manager/owner gives us free tickets to a flower arrangement exhibit at Mastuzakaya Department Store in Ueno, so we check it out. On the way up to the sixth floor, the elevator is filled with little old Japanese ladies. When the elevator doors open, more older Japanese women appear, milling around & meeting friends. Robby has his reservations about the exhibit. We seem to be the only attendees under 50. But we can’t be more surprised by the exhibit, which displays the works of flower arranging masters. Each display is a carefully designed, creative piece of work. The plants are quite ordinary (cypress branches, palm leaves, irises, peonies, sunflowers, etc), but they are arranged in such a deliberate way that they become like living sculptures. Some small arrangements are as simple as a cypress branch sticking out of a dark brown cylindrical ceramic vase. But the branch curves in three different directions, like reaching arms. The large arrangements are enormous & modern. The artists use mostly wood, rarely wire or metal. Robby is so impressed by each display, he slowly combs through each one & takes a picture. He later remarks on the interesting balance that the sculptures achieve. We wish we could understand the old women who stand around and buzz enthusiastically. I imagine they discuss the the style & try to figure out how the artist bends the tree limb or weaves the palm leaves.

When we exit the exhibit, Robby shares a little epiphany: flower arranging is so much cooler than modern art. What is modern art but a haphazard (maybe even accidental), esoteric work that only wants to look profound? Robby said although a large canvas with a dot in the center symbolizes our minute, insignificant presence in the universe, it is all B.S. Some of his animosity toward modern art spawns from our visit to the new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. We don’t understand the art, so we disparage it. Common reaction. This led us to an interesting discussion about art & how to judge good art. Here are a few ideas we are able to come up with:

1. Modern masterpieces aren’t accidents, though they might appear to be so.

2. Is labor intensive artwork automatically good artwork? Marcel Duchamp famously signs urinals to tease artists’ attempt at capturing beauty. Why can’t everyday objects be viewed as art?

3. Some modern art exists only as political or social commentary.

4. Does art need to be aesthetically pleasing?

5. Modern art elicits many interpretations from viewers. Does there need to be one right answer? What if our interpretations differ completely than the artist’s intended message?

6. Modern art encourages a reaction or a feeling from the viewer, not always an understanding. This can be frustrating for us laymen & women.

7. Is the artist’s purpose to reach out to the average joe-schmo?

8. (Robby’s point) On one extreme, there is complete structure (boring; pop culture; Brittney Spears), on the other, complete randomness (accidental? natural?). Robby thinks good art requires a balance between the amount of obvious planning and entropy. Modern art (for Robby) leans too far toward the latter.

Not only do our brains churn during this talk, we are also able to rest our sore legs. We go down to the basement to revel in the variety of prepared foods available, surreptiously eat cold meat skewers on a bench (we NEVER see Japanese people eating in any place but restaurants; we don’t know where they go with their food!), and return to the Ueno subway station.

Next stop: Akihibara - the electronics mecca. Above the subway station are six department-store-sized floors of electronics, from USB drives to TVs to washing machines. Robby happily carouses on the video games floor while I marvel on the variety of stationery & pens. We vow to return for some shopping on our way back through Tokyo. Robby even suggests that we skip some museums in order to come back.

P.S. I must revise the last section on Kabuki-cho. There appears to be sexual liberation at play here. But after speaking with a friend who gives examples of the remnants of misogynism, I have some rethinking to do. Places like Kabuki-cho offer a reality to men’s fantasies. Looking at the sea of photos of prostitutes, it’s easy to why this business would be so attractive to young women. Does it make their decision to join the ranks empowering? Women who work in corporate business do not hold positions of power. They are “office ladies”, administrative assistants whose bosses are all men. Both occupations are disempowering to women. Liberation is more for stuffy & repressed salary men than for women.

When we explore the 8-story bookstore across the Akihibara subway station, we find a floor full of soft-porn magazines. Among the covers of scantily clad women, there are a few magazines with innocent-looking, half-naked adolescent girls. We are appalled that people would be allowed to indulge in this perverted fetish. Maybe it’s the Puritan in me speaking, but kiddie porn is absolutely revolting & disgusting.

We return to our ryokan & rest up before meeting a friend in the Shibuya district. There is nothing like Shibuya on a Saturday night. Thousands of young people in their finest clothing loiter around the streets & socialize. When the intersections turn green for walking, hundreds of people cross. The neon signs light up the streets so that we practically walk in daylight. We are overwhelmed. We walk through Love Hotel Hill, occupied by decorative hotels that charge around $50/hour. Then there’s Shibuya 109, a hangout spot for the dolled-up teenage girls. They eye the passers by as they smoke cigarettes & touch up their make-up. We squeeze into Condomania, which has Pokemon-tipped condoms, condoms with ruler markings, & lollipop condoms. We see many gaijin, foreigners (in groups or with their Japanese girlfriends). Most of the bars are either in the basements of buildings or on the high floors. There are also many pub-like restaurants on the higher floors. Dinner is at Mosburger, a delicious fast food joint that serves unusual burgers (spaghetti-like sauce, flavorful patties, cooked onions). They are unlike any American hamburger. After more walking, we check out a tiny club playing hip hop. The employees are black men, & there are only 5 people inside ( a few black men & Asian women). The space fits only a handful more, & there isn’t any dancing, so we leave. go to Ghetto Happy Dining, a pub/restaurant on the third floor of one of the many buildings.

This is the Tokyo we were looking forward to!