As mentioned in my introductory post, I've been living in Tokyo for well over a decade. This will be the first in a series of posts chronicling my (mis)adventures and travels in the land of the rising sun.
Summer in Japan is a time for festivals, fireworks, cold beer, hot sun, and... ghosts. Obon in mid-August is the Japanese version of Halloween, when the spirits of one's ancestors are briefly free to roam the land once again and make a visit to their family homes. It's fitting then, that last weekend my family & I took a day trip to a yokai (ghost) exhibition featuring characters and artwork from the beloved manga GeGeGe no Kitaro.
Outside of Japan, Doraemon and Hello Kitty are well known. But I'm guessing few foreigners will have heard of GeGeGe no Kitaro, both a television show and comic book, which is just as universally loved inside Japan. Picture it as a Japanese Ghostbusters, except the main characters are themselves ghosts. The story revolves around Kitaro, a ghost boy who, along with his yokai friends, strives to protect humans from the more nefarious of his kind and promote harmonious co-existence between humans and yokai.
Like most day trips in Tokyo, our Saturday excursion began with catching the train at the local city train station. The Japanese rail network is one of the marvels of the modern world. So dense is the criss-crossing network of rail lines that you can get pretty much anywhere worth going in the whole country simply by hopping on the nearest train and knowing what connections to take. I haven't been behind the wheel of a car since leaving the States 13 years ago, and I don't miss driving one bit.
This pic is a bit blurry as the train was still moving when I took it.
The GeGeGe no Kitaro exhibit was located inside the Sunshine City shopping mall, one of the biggest attractions of Tokyo's bustling Ikebukuro district. We arrived at Ikebukuro Station (the third busiest train station in the world) just before noon.
Walking through Ikebukuro Station. This pic doesn't quite do it justice, but should give you at least some idea of how crowded it is.
Posing with my wife on the street leading to Sunshine City. During the weekends, the street is closed to cars so pedestrians have more room to walk.
We were quite hungry by the time we reached the mall, so we decided to grab some lunch on the restaurant floor before heading to the exhibit. Tokyo is a great city for people who love food. Just about every imaginable type of cuisine is available somewhere. Today I let my wife pick, and she felt like Chinese.
Chinese food in Japan is very different from Chinese food in America. I ordered the lunch set for ¥1600 yen. The main dish was scrambled eggs with shrimp and tomato. Side dishes included a bowl of rice, small salad, soup, and tsukemono (pickled vegetables meant to be eaten as garnish for the rice). A dessert of annin tofu (almond jelly pudding) rounded out the filling meal.
A hearty, filling meal to keep my energy up!
We ate lunch here. Note the display case full of plastic food on the left. Most restaurants in Japan have displays like this, representative of their menu so you can see at a glance if it looks suitable for your appetite.
After lunch, we walked through the mall trying to find the exhibit. When exploring Japan, it's interesting to see the juxtaposition between 21st century modernity and cultural traditions dating back to ancient times. For the most part, Sunshine City looks and feels like any mega-mall you might find in the US. But I was reminded of its essential Japanese nature when we walked past a kimono shop, squeezed in right next to other clothing stores selling jeans, T-shirts, and the like. These days, sadly, people only wear kimonos and yukatas for special occasions.
It didn't take long to locate the GeGeGe no Kitaro exhibit on the 4th floor. Queuing up in a long line with other Kitaro fans (you do a lot of lining up in crowded Tokyo), we waited patiently until it was our turn to enter. At last, filled with excitement, we headed in to begin our tour.
Rather than narrate every step of the way, I'll let these pictures speak for themselves (thankfully cameras were allowed; I wasn't sure if they would be):
Alright, let's do this thing!
Kitaro was born in a graveyard, clawing his way out of the belly of his dead mother after she was buried. Grisly!
These eyes followed us as we walked past. Spookay!
Plenty of creepy yokai inhabited the maze-like corridors of the exhibit.
Mirrors covered the floor and ceiling of this odd room, making the artwork spiral off to infinity if you looked up or down. Crazy vertigo here!
It's gonna eat me! Run away, run away!
The eyes have it.
At the end of the exhibit, we had the chance to snap pics with Kitaro's friend Neko Musume (Cat Girl) while browsing the souvenir shop.
It took less time than expected to see the whole exhibit, so we were left with some time before dinner and didn't feel like going home yet. Happily, there are many other things to do in Sunshine City. We decided to take an elevator up to the 60th floor observation deck of the giant office tower that connects to the shopping mall on its lower levels (nothing is free in Japan; of course we paid a hefty fee for the privilege of riding this special elevator). Walking around up there is not wise for those who are scared of heights!
You can't get a better view of Tokyo than this unless you're a bird! The white tower is an incinerator smokestack at a nearby garbage processing facility. They are a common sight throughout the city.
Here you can see the needle-like shape of Tokyo Skytree in the distance, poking up into the clouds. It's the tallest structure in Japan at a height of 634 meters.
We admired the view until twilight set in, and then headed back down to follow the dictates of our rumbling stomachs. My wife chose the lunch spot, so I got to pick dinner. Years ago I had tried Shakey's Pizza just outside Sunshine City and found it to be the best American pizza place in Tokyo. Tired and worn out from all that walking around, I figured a little American comfort food would be the perfect way to end the day. Shakey's was still there on the street corner leading to the train station, exactly as I remembered, so we tromped in looking forward to a treat.
Boy were we in for a disappointment. Maybe American style pizza is no longer profitable in Japan, or maybe the management changed; I don't know. But for whatever reason, the thick cheesy pepperoni goodness of years past was gone, replaced with an all-you-can-eat buffet catering to decidedly more Japanese tastes. It made me want to cry.
Sauteed burdock pizza anyone? Or maybe you'd prefer the mayonnaise & corn?
In honor of this blog, I decided to be adventurous and try the taco pizza (technically it was called burger pizza, but I thought it looked more like a taco). Screwing up my courage, I took a bite... and it actually wasn't that bad. Definitely different, but in a good way. Kind of like a soft tortilla style taco but made with pizza dough instead of the tortilla.
But there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I was going to try anything more exotic than that. I'm not as young as I used to be, don't want to throw too many curve balls at my poor digestive tract.
Mixed berries & banana pizza with acai sauce - this takes the prize for most horrid culinary abomination ever. It will haunt my nightmares for weeks I'm sure. Seriously. This should be on Fear Factor.
Feeling full if not completely satisfied, we said goodbye to Shakey's, got on the train at Ikebukuro Station, and made for home. All in all it was quite a fun, memorable day trip!
If you're ever in Tokyo, consider stopping by Sunshine City. It's not as internationally renowned as the Imperial Palace or Tokyo Tower, but it's well worth a detour if you've got an afternoon to spare. The GeGeGe no Kitaro exhibit was a limited time deal (we went close to the last possible date) but there's always something new and exciting to discover (other permanent attractions include an aquarium and Namco Namja Town amusement center). There's even the Sunshine City Prince Hotel if you care to spend the night.
And if you ever find a decent pizza place in Japan, do be sure to let me know!
Links for more info
Ikebukuro district: http://www.tokyoessentials.com/ikebukuro.html
GeGeGe no Kitaro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeGeGe_no_Kitar%C5%8D
Sunshine City: http://www.sunshinecity.co.jp/english/index.html
Namco Namja Town: http://www.namco.co.jp/tp/namja/index.html (the site is in Japanese but Google translate does a decent job making it intelligible and there's a link to an English info brochure)
Image credits: all images in this post are photographs taken on my iPhone. Taking photographs of exhibition artwork was freely permissible under visitor rules.