Another beautiful day...

The weather's been great: warm, not humid, slightly cool in the evening. There is NO eating on the streets and no garbage cans, therefore the streets are very clean. If you get some take-away food, you go to a park and eat. They stand in straight lines waiting to enter the subway car and are very patient. Lots of cute, small, fluffy dogs. The women are so slender, very feminine and walk around in high heels--I don't understand this. Ow.

We went on a English tour of the Earthquake Research Institute (ERI) which is the area of the campus where Miles is doing research on magma/volcanoes. Earthquakes--volcanoes--pick your natural disaster, they study it here. This is the nerve center for the earthquake early warning system for all of Japan. Japan gets 10% of the world's earthquakes with only 1% of the population (100 million). They showed us demos of earthquake and tsunami waves and how the build buildings with huge rubber blocks (base isolation). Very interesting and, like SF, they get numerous earthquakes every day, most too small to feel.

Tsunami Demo at ERI

We visited the Asakusa neighborhood which is home to the Senso-ji Temple, a lovely complex of temples, shrines, statues. Branching out like bike spokes are walking streets filled with trinket shops, special Japanese candy stores, rice cracker makers, tea cup shops, all pretty and busy.

Modern memorial at the Senso-ji Temple

Rice crackers galore

We then found a Drum Museum nearby which has a collection of 300+ drums from around the world, most of which have sticks available, encouraging us to play. We banged away for a while, all by ourselves, having a ball. Downstairs they sold drums and sticks of all sizes.

Banging away at the Drum Museum

Another day we went to the Akihabara electronics district which was unbelievable. We visited one store that was like Best Buy on steroids. Nine stories of every electronic device, home appliance, computer and dozens of varieties of each. AND, bicycles, watches, massage chairs, exercise equipment, clothing, restaurants...it just went on forever. Amazing.

Crowd waiting to use XBox 360 at electronics store


A happy shopper trying out a massage chair

While Miles is working, I spend my time wandering around to new neighborhoods, exploring. Recently I found a wonderful park 15 minutes away with a lake and lots of trails. Adjacent to the park is city library, a beautiful modern 5-story tall structure with lots of comfortable chairs and coffee table books about Japan. I'm in heaven! I love libraries!