Our First Day Out

We went to a small theater in Shibuya to see the movie, "Stolen" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071832/). It was definitely the smallest theater I've ever been to. We were sitting in the very back of the theater, so you can see just how small it is. The movie wasn't very good, not that I expected it to be. It was about how several paintings were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston, Massachusetts. She didn't seem to be a very interesting woman, the paintings didn't seem all that interesting, and the criminals involved weren't that interesting. The most interesting thing was probably the insurance company investigator's history with the Navy. They performed tests on him that involved putting him under UV lights. He developed skin cancer when he was in his 20's. That was the most interesting fact of the entire movie.

Shibuya is a huge shopping area. This city and area clearly has a lot of money. Below are two pictures of almost identical Ferraris that were parked within about 100 feet of each other. There are outrageously expensive cars all over the city all of the time. I saw a car from the same era as this one: http://www.yorkwa.com.au/Motor.Museum/images/1934MG-NE.500x210.jpg. It was just riding around on the street. I can't even remember seeing that anytime in the US.

This picture isn't very clear, but it was meant to show how much personal attention there is in a lot of the city. Every major store has an abundance of human help. You probably can't see it in the picture, but there are about 5 guys standing outside of this department store to hail cabs for people. In other stores there are people just holding signs to advertise the products next to them. That job would typically be done by a low-to-mid quality stand in the US. That alone would explain the high prices around Tokyo. We went into this department store, but didn't even come close to buying anything. The most basic kitchen utensils were about $30, and there's no spoon worth that much to me (barring some freak combination with something like a 20 in LCD screen).

I took a picture of a keyboard just to show how similar they are to ours. The only difference is that the keys have additional functions to type Hiragana.

This is just an unusual McDonalds product. I hope it's not something new in the US that I just don't know about.

This is a sculpture about 200 feet from our front door. It's nothing special, except that it somehow eluded our attention this entire time that we've lived here. How could something this big and yellow completely escape our attention? I was looking almost directly at it when Heather pointed it out. I honestly didn't even see it until she did.

This picture is just to show how many people ride bikes in this city (not how poorly I take pictures at night). These collections of bikes are everywhere in the city. Any place with a reasonable amount of people is bound to have many bikes parked near it.

We ate out together for our second time while we were out. We had Italian this time. It was delicious. It was about $17 for what would normally be a side dish in the US. I had a very small plate of orchiette and Heather had a reasonably-sized pizza. After that, we went to a bakery and had a couple of dessert pastries. One thing I would like to note is that there are bakeries everywhere. Between here and Heather's work (10 min walk), you can pass about 8 bakeries/dessert shops.

The last thing I would like to note is that many things that have faded into history in the US are still alive and strong here in Tokyo. Two things I noticed this weekend were the chain, Tony Romas, and the show, Alf. Amazingly, right after seeing the show Alf, I encountered a reference to the show that assumed your knowledge of it. I wish I could remember the reference, but it talked about aliens that like to eat cats. If I hadn't just seen the show, I wouldn't have caught it.