Japan: Day 03: Kaminari Man #1 and Man #2, a Valkyrie and the Skytree

Firstly, I know it’s “Kaminarimon” and not what I said in the title… if you don’t get the reference then you should be ashamed of yourself. Anyway, the third day was very cool…

Just like the previous day, it was a very early start for us since we had a few things to do for the day, though not as much as we did yesterday. Luckily for us, all the locations and things we wanted to see for the day were located around the Asakusa area.

We started off with a place that my mother wanted to visit and it wasn’t until we reached that place did I suddenly get an odd flashback…

Kaminarimon Gate

The first thing that popped straight into my head when I saw Kaminarimon Gate was that episode of Samurai Champloo where the gang are in Edo and they meet up with that Dutch dude who takes them sightseeing around the place. It was that very moment where they’re in front of Kaminarimon Gate and the Dutch dude exclaims “Is this really the famous Kaminari Man?!” to which Mugen replies by pointing at the two guardian statues saying “Yeah, that’s Man #1 and that’s Man #2.”

It took everything I had to not burst out laughing right then and there as that short scene played out in my head but it was certainly one of the highlights of the day for me. We spent some time going through the market and into the temple and looking around the garden area at the side. I took a bunch of pictures though the majority of the enjoyment was had by my mother who is into the whole spiritual sort of stuff.

Also, on a final note… that monkey statue… someone really needs to explain that one to me cause it’s confusing the hell out of me.

Chiba Institute of Technology

The next stop was the Tokyo Skytree, but before heading up the tower, we first headed to the Chiba Institute of Technology Skytree Campus to take a look at something I wanted to see as soon as my parents told me they were making plans to take us to Japan. The very first thing I went to see when we hit the floor was, of course, the life-size display of Alto’s VF-25F from Macross Frontier.

Oh, and of course, there was also some other interesting stuff to see there like an interactive wall of planetary information that was all in Japanese so we couldn’t read a single bit of it except for the numbers and the few bits that were in English. There was also a katana made from metal found in a meteorite and then another area dedicated to the design and development of various types of robots and vehicles.

It was all pretty cool, though, naturally, the Valkyrie was my favourite part of the exhibit.

Tokyo Skytree

The last thing for the day was to go up the Tokyo Skytree and take a look at the view… which wasn’t all too good since it was a very overcast day and apparently it was raining everywhere to the point of flooding parts of the city except for the locations we were visiting that day. Actually, funny thing is that there was a lot of very strange weather going on in Japan at the time where it was raining, flooding, hailing and all kinds of weird bullshit… yet somehow, we avoided ALL of it.

That was our final day in Tokyo and within those first three days, we did end up doing quite a bit and seeing some interesting things. The next day, we head to Kyoto…