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travelingadiva) wrote2010-03-16 09:51 am
travelingadiva) wrote2010-03-16 09:51 am
Entry tags:
Imperial Palace and Kabuki
Today our plan of action was to a) Go to the Imperial Palace and take a tour there, b) see an act from Kabuki theatre and c) go back to the Tarazuka store (solely for my benefit). We completed the list before 1pm.
We arrived at the Imperial Palace about fifteen minutes before our tour was supposed to go, wandered until we sort of found the gate we were looking for, and managed to miss the tour. However, the outside gardens are open to visitors, admission free, to walk as they chose (which was what we wanted) so we just did that.
"Donna?" "Yeah?" "Does the Imperial Palace have a garden?" "Yeah." "Is it bit?" "Probably."
Mind, this was all outside. We hadn't even found an entrance gate yet.
The parliament of fowl!
Royal swans don't have to forage for food! They get a special box. And so do the royal fish. Look, Iunno.
The front gate. Well, one of them.
Now we're inside. Ees beeg.
This is an old guardhouse back from when they were all first constructed. This is one of the only three left.
An old stone cellar. Many believe that it's actual a tunnel to the palace, though no secret entrance has ever been found.
This is the sign!
This is what it is!
And we are back outside again.
It was a really nice day to walk around the gardens since it was actually warm with a nice breeze and just really pleasant. And since it's free, a lot of people just come to get in walks or jogs, which I think is pretty neat. We came across what we think was a sumo house (or at least, an area where some were doing something) considering the ungodly screaming coming from it, but sadly it was inside the grounds, where we were not allowed to go.
After that we hopped on a subway to get to the Kabuki-za, a kabuki theatre that is actually (supposedly) destined to be torn down in April. We got tickets for a single act, and a shorter one at that; only fifteen minutes. We saw a little something called Sanmon Gosan No Kiri (Goemon and Hisayoshi), and the description (from the website) is as follows: Though short, this play is one of the most visually spectacular in kabuki. The famous villain Ishikawa Goemon enjoys a sea of cherry blossoms while sitting on top the large gate of Nanzen-ji Temple. His enjoyment of the scene is cut short, though, but the appearance below of his arch-nemesis, the general Hisayoshi. It was interesting to finally see a snippet of what kabuki theatre is all about. My favorite parts were the stage-ninja (not their actual titles). These are men dressed all in black who do all the moving of things, including an instance where Goemon "magically" moved his table behind him with just a bit of help from the stage ninja in plain sight doing the actual moving. There was also a for of audience interaction--people would actually yell things out to the stage. Huh.
After the show we got onto a line to Ginza and eventually found the Takarazuka theatre again, and from there found the store. I bought two postcards and bit the bullet and purchased the photobook of Bolero. the show we saw. The pictures in it are gorgeous, you can see the incredible costume detail, I probably wouldn't be getting the chance again, and it was only 1000JPY. I'm very glad I got it and don't regret the purchase at all. Something for me!
We stopped to get lunch at a place Donna ate at her first night in and wanted to return to. The food was really good! I got a vegetable-curry-soup-thing and it was delicious and had vegetables in it. Um yum yum. There was also this namba(?) bread we got with the dinner (and rice and a small salad) that was really yummmy, and yogurt and tea for desert, all included in the set price. 650JPY! Pretty great! We meandered around for a little while longer, emerging from a building just in time to see Ginza's amazing mechanical clock.
Considering it started at 3pm and finished about 3:05...
Tired of Ginza and all the expensive foreign-type shops, we grabbed another train to Yoyogi park. That was an experience too.
Hee.
I think this is my favorite sign shot ever.
The park really seemed like the place for kids to hang out after school. We passed two girls dancing, a boy trick hula-hooping, another boy juggling (Hillel's better), two girls who seemed to have come to blow bubbles, and a bunch of school groups just out and about, many from drama clubs. We also saw this guys:
Yes, yes those are pikachu hats that half of them are wearing. And at least two of them were in wigs and dresses. The girl in blue hair and the brunette in the corner? Boys. And it just seemed perfectly normal too. They were playing some bizarre game that appeared to consist mostly of yelling a lot, running in strange ways, and occasionally falling down.
We left the park to try and find another metro station and ended up managing to walk to Shibuya. There we found an expensive mall that contained a little cafe and we stopped to get sweets. I want to eat cake in an actual sweet shop still (chocolate! or fruit!) but that place was okay. They were certainly pretty enough.
And on walking through a stairwell to finally get to another metro station, we passed a work of art. Japan has graffiti too!
Just. Pretty.
We also managed to find a shrine smack-dab in the middle of Shibuya. I mean, there was a huge high-rise apartment building to the right, it's dwarfed by shops of all sides, and in the middle is this shrine.
Well we thought it was cool
Then we went to Ginza in order to find Donna a citibank. We arrived around, eh, 6-ish? THREE HOURS LATER we manage to find a bank. Obviously we are awesome. But the lotta walking made up for yesterday's not-a-lotta-walking. Tomorrow, studio Ghibli and Harajuku!
We arrived at the Imperial Palace about fifteen minutes before our tour was supposed to go, wandered until we sort of found the gate we were looking for, and managed to miss the tour. However, the outside gardens are open to visitors, admission free, to walk as they chose (which was what we wanted) so we just did that.
"Donna?" "Yeah?" "Does the Imperial Palace have a garden?" "Yeah." "Is it bit?" "Probably."
Mind, this was all outside. We hadn't even found an entrance gate yet.
The parliament of fowl!
Royal swans don't have to forage for food! They get a special box. And so do the royal fish. Look, Iunno.
The front gate. Well, one of them.
Now we're inside. Ees beeg.
This is an old guardhouse back from when they were all first constructed. This is one of the only three left.
An old stone cellar. Many believe that it's actual a tunnel to the palace, though no secret entrance has ever been found.
This is the sign!
This is what it is!
And we are back outside again.
It was a really nice day to walk around the gardens since it was actually warm with a nice breeze and just really pleasant. And since it's free, a lot of people just come to get in walks or jogs, which I think is pretty neat. We came across what we think was a sumo house (or at least, an area where some were doing something) considering the ungodly screaming coming from it, but sadly it was inside the grounds, where we were not allowed to go.
After that we hopped on a subway to get to the Kabuki-za, a kabuki theatre that is actually (supposedly) destined to be torn down in April. We got tickets for a single act, and a shorter one at that; only fifteen minutes. We saw a little something called Sanmon Gosan No Kiri (Goemon and Hisayoshi), and the description (from the website) is as follows: Though short, this play is one of the most visually spectacular in kabuki. The famous villain Ishikawa Goemon enjoys a sea of cherry blossoms while sitting on top the large gate of Nanzen-ji Temple. His enjoyment of the scene is cut short, though, but the appearance below of his arch-nemesis, the general Hisayoshi. It was interesting to finally see a snippet of what kabuki theatre is all about. My favorite parts were the stage-ninja (not their actual titles). These are men dressed all in black who do all the moving of things, including an instance where Goemon "magically" moved his table behind him with just a bit of help from the stage ninja in plain sight doing the actual moving. There was also a for of audience interaction--people would actually yell things out to the stage. Huh.
After the show we got onto a line to Ginza and eventually found the Takarazuka theatre again, and from there found the store. I bought two postcards and bit the bullet and purchased the photobook of Bolero. the show we saw. The pictures in it are gorgeous, you can see the incredible costume detail, I probably wouldn't be getting the chance again, and it was only 1000JPY. I'm very glad I got it and don't regret the purchase at all. Something for me!
We stopped to get lunch at a place Donna ate at her first night in and wanted to return to. The food was really good! I got a vegetable-curry-soup-thing and it was delicious and had vegetables in it. Um yum yum. There was also this namba(?) bread we got with the dinner (and rice and a small salad) that was really yummmy, and yogurt and tea for desert, all included in the set price. 650JPY! Pretty great! We meandered around for a little while longer, emerging from a building just in time to see Ginza's amazing mechanical clock.
Considering it started at 3pm and finished about 3:05...
Tired of Ginza and all the expensive foreign-type shops, we grabbed another train to Yoyogi park. That was an experience too.
Hee.
I think this is my favorite sign shot ever.
The park really seemed like the place for kids to hang out after school. We passed two girls dancing, a boy trick hula-hooping, another boy juggling (Hillel's better), two girls who seemed to have come to blow bubbles, and a bunch of school groups just out and about, many from drama clubs. We also saw this guys:
Yes, yes those are pikachu hats that half of them are wearing. And at least two of them were in wigs and dresses. The girl in blue hair and the brunette in the corner? Boys. And it just seemed perfectly normal too. They were playing some bizarre game that appeared to consist mostly of yelling a lot, running in strange ways, and occasionally falling down.
We left the park to try and find another metro station and ended up managing to walk to Shibuya. There we found an expensive mall that contained a little cafe and we stopped to get sweets. I want to eat cake in an actual sweet shop still (chocolate! or fruit!) but that place was okay. They were certainly pretty enough.
And on walking through a stairwell to finally get to another metro station, we passed a work of art. Japan has graffiti too!
Just. Pretty.
We also managed to find a shrine smack-dab in the middle of Shibuya. I mean, there was a huge high-rise apartment building to the right, it's dwarfed by shops of all sides, and in the middle is this shrine.
Well we thought it was cool
Then we went to Ginza in order to find Donna a citibank. We arrived around, eh, 6-ish? THREE HOURS LATER we manage to find a bank. Obviously we are awesome. But the lotta walking made up for yesterday's not-a-lotta-walking. Tomorrow, studio Ghibli and Harajuku!
Pretty birds in the big garden.
(Anonymous) 2010-03-16 04:04 pm (UTC)(link)For the bread that you ate for dinner, do you mean naan? If you do, I concur with the fact that naan is delicious.
Some of the most satisfying experiences I've had traveling have been sitting in parks and watching people do whatever they do in parks. It's awesome that you've had time to do that.
Beautiful graffiti. Beautiful pictures. Thank you for sharing them.
:0)Brittany
Re: Pretty birds in the big garden.
(Anonymous) 2010-03-17 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Pretty birds in the big garden.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-03-18 01:28 am (UTC)(link)THE TROUBLE SHOULD NOT HANG TO THE OTHER!
HAH!!
guess who.