And Yet, They Still Craved for Beauty...

The weather outside is miserable. I am so determined to just GO somewhere constantly while awake that I did head out to Asakusa yesterday against my better judgment. You can't tell from that picture, because when I got up and headed downstairs, it looked a little gray but nothing to be worried about. Of course, when I left the house everything changed.

My breakfast consisted of these weirdo mochi, one stuffed with red bean paste and the other with tasty-I-have-no-idea. I picked these up at the fish market and left 'em in the fridge until their deliciousness fed me breakfast. I also got these weird mega pancake looking mochi and some other equally bizarre mochi that I will eat this morning.

That's my view from eating breakfast of the common area. It's funky, but not too bad. I'm obviously not taking pictures inside the fridge. Also, TV gets BBC.

That's the stove and the sink in case you can't tell. It's not so bad, really. I guess I was expecting brand new, but when you think about how many people have stayed here and are staying here, it's not so bad. I met one of the fellows on my floor, Matt. He's from England, and is teaching English at the Japanese Walmart, Jasco. I had a flashback to Kamikaze Girls and I wish he had been in that scene because his cockney (maybe?) accent is so thick that it would've been hilarious. He teaches English to tiny children while their parents shop. He's essentially the babysitter-turned-teacher. I'll probably go have another conversation with him this morning and we'll see if he comes up with anything new. He also has this cough-runny nose sickness so I shared my dayquil to help him get through the day. I hope it worked but I'm afraid it might've made it worse. You never know.
I headed out to Asakusa on the Tokyo Subway. I got on the wrong train, got off and got on the right train. wooooo, adventure!

Seems nine is still to early for Tokyo. I made it to Asakusa at around 9:45, while the shops were just starting to set up. It was nice to be there early. I made it into the temple early too before it was swamped with people.

There are still alot of people there, but it wasn't too bad.

At the gate you pass these two huge guys that are supposed to ward off bad spirits or something. I'm not good at this understanding Buddist temples business. I like their faces.

They aren't extremely clear because of the screen, but there's no getting around that. These guys are like 10 meters tall, carved entirely out of wood. This temple has been built and rebuilt at least four times. The most recent one was after the fire bombing of Tokyo. The temple burned down and then was rebuilt in 1967 by a wealthy benefactor. I find that really fascinating about Tokyo. It's easy to forget (for someone so young as myself) that this city was burned to the ground in World War II. It was also heavily destroyed in a earthquake a couple decades before that. The city's ability to rebuild itself and remake important points of cultural heritage is very inspiring and breathtaking. Heading to this temple was an incredible experience for me because the grounds are beautiful and I really felt moved by the entire circumstance.

Here you can purchase incense to burn to heal yourself (or so I read). You light the incense and push the purifying smoke onto your afflicted area.

Because this is a Buddist temple, you are supposed to purify yourself (a bit) before entering. This is the purifying water zone, where you wash your hands and probably some other things but I don't know and the people I watched didn't give me a consensus.

The kannon and shrine. I dropped my coins in and prayed like everyone else. I'm sure I was doing it wrong and not praying in Japanese but hopefully my sentiments were conveyed. And I also paid for a bit of upkeep of the grounds no doubt.

Beautiful luscious green grounds. I didn't take many photos, but this one is definitely the best.

temples are also havens for food vendors, especially the Japanese elote stand. Instead of having the usual butter, mayo and parmesan(the kraft version and therefor spelled "parmesan") the Japanese grilled corn has a thickened sweetened soy sauce. I didn't get one, I was a little more bent on soup. This area is known for their oden, a fish based broth laden with fish cakes. I didn't end up getting oden, but I wandered into an area that must've had some pretty awesome oden. Unfortunately I was a very obvious foreigner and they didn't want to serve me. woooooo.



First cat located. I really wanted to eat here but the old lady running the place literally blocked the door. waaaaaahhh. Instead I went to a quick and easy chain restaurant and had 500Y curry udon. The worst curry udon I have ever had. Unfortunate, but inexpensive.



There were so many beautiful food places. This one really reminded me of Spirited Away. Giant bowls of food just ripe for the taking. Fortunately I had already eaten and there was an attendant, so I would not turn into a pig. But Miyazaki's inspiration must've been at least partially here.
I wandered around a bunch and decided that I would head off in search of the museums that my trusty Time Out Tokyo guide mentioned. The first one I went to look for was the Drum Museum. I did not find it, instead I found the Amuse Museum.
This place was amazing. I can't express how extremely passionate I was about this in words on a flat screen. I took so many pictures of the Boro exhibit it was almost ridiculous. In fact, it was, because it ran my camera out of batteries and I don't have photos of the rest of the day.
What I found so incredibly amazing about this place was that you area encouraged to touch the artifacts. I guess they aren't that old, but you can still touch them. They are part of the collection of the life's work of this amazing cultural anthropologist, Chuzaburo TANAKA. He saved these garments because he saw the value of the lives represented in each piece of clothing. As Japan because more materialistic and modern like the rest of the world, the authenticity found in these works wasn't valued for what it was. New is preferred over mended and patched and old. These pieces were so unbelievably textural and fascinating. The Amuse Museum was the ultimate Emma-museum by far. It also must be fairly new because it wasn't in any guidebooks.




It's this texture that really drew me into these garments, but the English explanations of everything sold me. I first looked at these and thought, ok, mended garments. But the explanations reminded me that someone's hand placed each of those stitches. Someone wore these garments to shreds so that they need to to be patched. And then they wore them again. And they patched them again. And here I was touching this stuff and photographing it up close and personal thanks to this fellow who knew that these were a cultural treasure. He fought for them to be granted treasure status and be protected by the Japanese government and he got it. He collected all these stories from these old ladies who talked about mending their garments when they had nothing else and how the whole family would curl up naked together to sleep at night in the giant heavy kimono like donja that was often patched with hemp cloth and stuffed with hemp. The other thing I found really interesting was that cotton was valued and terribly expensive. They would have an original garment cut from cotton cloth and slowly have to patch it over with their hand woven and hand dyed hemp cloth. With the rags that were too small to be used for anything else, they would make rugs and belts and housewares. On the sixth floor of this museum was a relaxation zone where you could sit, drink tea, and watch girls weave these rag fabrics. Unfortunately they were filming some promotional video at the time so I couldn't sit there and watch the epic weaving process. And my camera battery was dead at this point, so there would be no photographing of this situation.
Chuzaburo made a very big point in his collection to collect all of the Boro garments that were used. He included diapers for old people, something that it was very difficult for him to get a hold of, but very culturally important to these people as they took care of their elders who had mended and created the clothing they were wearing over time. He also included woman's work clothing and woman's night wear, talking about how they enjoyed to come home and take off their itchy work wear and put on these soft handmade garments. It helped them relax. I enjoyed reading these labels because without that added commentary, the pieces in this exhibit would not have had the amazing depth and importance that they hold.

This is a life cloth, bodo. It was kept onto of straw underneath the donja in the winter. It was where women would give birth.
"We individuals do not stand on our own. We are here through our parents, grandparents, and all the ancestors that existed before us. We could easily trace back to more than 1,000 lives of our ancestors through the past ten generations. BODO has always reminded us that we would not be standing here right now if even one person had been missing from the unbroken line of family."
The power in cloth is something that is often lost in the day where clothing is considered "burnable garbage" and quickly thrown away to be lost forever. The cultural treasure found in these garments has been preserved and saved for future generations to hopefully understand how important each individual of their family really was to their birth. I think this is especially lost in America where now all births are done in hospitals where I almost wonder if there could be any blessings left from previous ancestors like the Bodo cloth leaves to the newborn upon its arrival into the world. There really is something powerful about the amount of time it takes for handiwork, and that was really moving to me in this museum. I bought the book from the exhibition (that is really a good piece of publishing) and I took many pictures for those of you interested in further exploring this subject.
There was also a special exhibit about Maekake-aprons, which were hand embroidered aprons used to keep women warm in the rough terrain of northern Japan. Alot of these aprons were given to Chuzaburo by the women who made them because of his obvious interest in their cultural heritage. The embroidery present on these items is really beautiful. They were originally made with hand woven hemp cloth that was then embellished with dyed wool threads.

After this moving cultural experience I wandered in search of the Edo Shitamachi Traditional Crafts Museum which was less than impressive. It was interesting to see which crafts still survive and the craftsmen that still make them in that area, but nothing was in English and my knowledge of the kanji that are associated with crafts is absolutely nothing. But it was neat to see that there are people who still craft in traditional styles.
I then went in search of a post office, got lost, and then finally found it. I went to Kappabashi Dori or Kitchen Town. I didn't know that pretty much everything was closed Sundays, because I was in search of plastic food. The plastic food I found was horrifyingly expensive and that's not the souvenir I'm bringing back for everyone like I had originally hoped.