Entries this day: Garden fumi

Garden

3:57pm JST Tuesday 26 August 2003

Went to Sankeien Garden near Sakuragicho, kinda tucked away in the back alleys next to a neighborhood. I was generally impressed with the thick stone stockroom (into which we were not allowed), but generally not so impressed with everything else. I must be in a bad mood.

I chatted with a cat named Kyo, and a woman named Chen. Kyo is from Burma, and Chen is from Taiwan. She knows Mandarin, Cantonese, English, Japanese. Of course I don't know as much about Kyo, but he seemed pretty cool and I gave him my email address so he could send me some of the pics he took.

It was nice (the garden), but it was, I am guessing, far removed from how it used to be. Change happens, but they tried to pretend it wasn't happening. Fire extinguishers in ancient rooms, and concrete benches made to look like wood. Ah well. whatever.

- - - -

My arms are sore as FUCK from those pushups I did. Embarassingly sore. I did 44 pushups in 5 minutes and I'm paying for it now. My triceps (I think) are so tight that it's super painful to bend my arms; I need to let them relax. I've been self accupressuring them, and thinking about accupuncture and wondering where the right spots are to press.

fumi

10:41pm JST Tuesday 26 August 2003

Tonight Fumi took me to a building I had never heard of, but that turns out I had wanted to visit since the second day I was in Japan. This is the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office or something like that; a single building with two 55 story towers, each with a viewing area on the 45th floor or so. We took some time to scope the view from each direction, and on the 7th of 8 windows I noticed... "wait a minute! That's the NOVA sign that I used as a landmark when I first got here. Oh yeah, it was Shinjuku station.. and that's where my hotel was, and *that* must be the Nova main office... which makes *these* the buildings I saw and wanted to explore!"

Tight.

So we went to that building and scoped the Huge Clock, and then zipped over to Shinjuku station and I found the Gateway 21 office so I can find it easily tomorrow.

Then I bought a 1000 yen suica (pass) for the JR lines and *then* we ate ice cream. I had an ice cream sandwich thing that basically was ice cream in a hamburger bun shaped thing. The bread was harder than hamburger but softer than bagel, but basically tasteless. I determined that an ice cream filled doughnut would rule.