Akihabara and Sumo!

On wednesday Jake and I were on our own again. Since it was a beautiful day out, we decided to make our first stop the Tokyo Metro building, which is just a short walk from our hotel. This is the tallest building in Tokyo, and if you take the elevator to the top floor, you can see pretty much the entire city from their observation deck. On a very clear day, you can even see Mt. Fuji! Unfortunately it was a little bit too hazy for us to see the mountain, but the rest of the view was spectacular. It really makes you realize how dense of a city Tokyo is - every bit of available space is being put to use somehow.

Next we hopped on the train and headed to Akihabara, which is home to Electric Town. Basically this is an area of Tokyo that sells every electronic gadget known to man. There are cell phone shops, computer and stereo stores, and even stores that just sell random circuit boards! Electric Town also sells lots of toys and anime memorabilia. We went in one store that had 3 floors dedicated just to models! One floor for historical models, one for model cars and one for model trains! Crazy, huh?

Jake remembered from his last Tokyo trip that somewhere in Akihabara was a street where they sold nice Japanese pottery, but he couldn't remember exactly how to get there. We decided to just walk around and look for it, but we couldn't find it, and instead wound up in a different part of the city altogether. I'm not really sure where we were, but there was a great open air market and lots of golf shops there. Jake and I found a little place to eat lunch and we had some really tasty soba noodles and some Indian Curry. Kind of an odd combination, but it worked. After that we made our way back to Electric Town. We never did find that area that sold pottery, and Marc told us at dinner last night that that was because it actually isn't in Akihabara at all, but in another part of the city! He promised to take us there before the end of our trip.

Our next stop was Ryogoku. Ryogoku is home to the Tokyo-Edo museum, and it is also where the fall Sumo tournament is! Jake and I checked out the museum first. It covers the history of the city and it is a really interesting museum. It has a life size replica of the nihombashi bridge that you walk across as you enter, and it also has lots of beautiful incredibly detailed models of what Tokyo looked like before the big fire and WWII. It was great to see.

After the museum, we got to go watch Sumo! Jake and I are really lucky, because Sumo only happens three times a year, and our trip just happened to fall during one of the tournaments. Our seats were really high up in the stadium, but eventually we snuck down to the ground floor and stood in a doorway there to watch the matches. It was much more exciting when you could see them up close, even though we're still not exactly sure how Sumo works. The basic rule is that whoever gets pushed out of the ring or touches the ground first loses - but thats just the actual fight. Before they fight there are several rituals which we didn't totally understand. First the wrestlers would get into the ring and do some stretches, then they would get into position as if they were about to start - but then they'd sort of change their minds and go back to their corners. They'd repeat this at least three or four times before each fight. There was also lots of arm and chest slapping, and they throw a lot of salt into the ring. Kind of confusing, but still interesting to watch, and the matches themselves are pretty exciting! If you're ever in Tokyo during a Sumo tournament, it's definitely worth checking out!