due to pouring down rain for the last two days i had time for a little house keeping today. no that does not mean photo comments, but it does mean most of the journal entries get photos, and that the gomez and godzilla photo finally got on the blog.
few things to mention, the white building behind the bridge in the entry about central tokyo is the most of the imperial palace you actually are allowed to see, and from about as close as your about to get. the rest of the grounds are huge, but are all walled off.
i forgot all about something in ueno park at one of the shrines there (and id even taken a photo of it) the stone wall picture with the multi coloured ribbons and the bird of peace. under the bird is a flame lit from fire found at hiroshima and a flame created from two ruined nagasaki roof tiles.
it is one of a number of "nuclear lights" that have been lit at shrines all over japan as part of their campaign that nuclear weapons should never be used again. the original flame that was found was used in the 80s to go all the way across the world for a un summit regarding nuclear weapons.
yesterday we were up before 6am and off to the fish market. it was definitely an experience, all the people we had spoken too said you had to be there early and it got worse as the day went on. all the fish in tokyo comes into this market before it is sold, shipped on to shops throughout the capital. auctioning for fish begins at 3am and tourists are not allowed to watch, then from 5am the ferrying of fish in polystrene boxes on the backs of small 1 man motorised trucks begins.
usually all the action is over by 8-9am, yet we only got there at quarter to 7 and it seemed there was more than enough work to be done. so many different kinds of fish, and quite a few interesting sights. huge frozen tuna being hacked into smaller transportable chunks by a guy with an axe. fish tanks full of exotic fish piled ontop of each other not really for decoration like we are used to seeing, but instead just left there to store.
a few times we had to move or risk getting "fished" sprayed by wet fish bits and blood from people hacking fish heads off, or turning them into sellable chunks. we got one slightly morbid movie of a fish so recently chopped up that the mouth of the fish head was still moving.
i didnt get any photos from this bit of the day, as my camera just couldnt cope with the water reflections and lack of natural light in the market. this is one of the reasons im shopping around for a new one (as well as them being cheaper here) also it made sense that raul take the pictures with his better camera and i watched out for speeding truck drivers and informed him when he needed to move or expect bodily harm. think the most used word of the morning was "truck"
sushi for breakfast after the tour of the market which was the best i have ever had, and didnt feel overly strange eating it at that time.
moving on from the market we hit the museums, there was a special exhibition of items from the shogunate and last samurai dynasty. no photographs were allowed in the museum, possibly why japanese people take so many photos on holiday if they cant do it at home. so my camera remained unused all day which leads me to the title of this article and the photo i have picked for it.
your all lucky, because im about to explain an injoke, which very rarely happens. me and alot of my friends play computer games, ones we can all together and we form a "raid" to go kill an evil "boss", this became a euphmism (unclear again as to why) for if you were going to the bathroom for a longtime. you were going to see the "raidboss"
well the raidboss in japan scares me to death, for 1 he is plugged into the wall, which just seems wrong, the toilet seat is heated which is quite a plesant feeling once you get over the initial fear that its set at too high a temperature and your going to hurt yourself. he is also equipped with two kinds of "ass jet" which ill leave upto you to think about, all the controls except the standard flush handle are in japanese so we leave them well alone. and why! is there a tap fitting ontop of it for when you flush it and the water circulates?
just to finish off the in joke though (which i wont explain) the brand of toilet is "naxx"
