August! Part 3 – And here’s mom…

Yes! Indeed!

First, let me just open by saying that I SAW A FUCKIN’ BLIMP!  That’s right, dear readers, a real honest-to-god blimp flying over Saitama University.  I went there with my host mom and her niece for an open-campus thing.  While the niece was doing a bunch of boring stuff, okaasan and I were out and about, listening to the incredibly loud bugs and seeing blimps (well, just one) flying around overhead.  Amazing, let me tell you!

Mom in Tokyo!

Anywho, the next day mom came in, and she and I rode the many trains from Narita to Tomioka. It was fine, at first, right up until we got to Ueno, where we had to buy our ticket from Ueno to Takasaki. Now, usually ticket buying is really straight-forward, but for this particular train you have to buy a regular ticket and then pay an extra fee for either a reserved or non-reserved seat. Of course, you can do this easily if you know how, but it involves more than just the general button-pushing involved in buying a run-of-the-mill ticket. In the end, I had to wait in a S L O W moving line for a half hour (while the last train to Tomioka left Takasaki) to buy my ticket from an attendant.
After FINALLY getting on the train to Takasaki, we realized we had gotten on the local, which took twice as long (two hours instead of one) to take us to Takasaki. From there, we had to take a taxi, and the ride cost us $80! I shit you not, dear readers! I mean, come on! It’s not that far from there to here. But in any case, we eventually made it home to my sweltering apartment.

A gallimimus

The next day, we attempted to take the bus to the Tomioka natural history museum, but this only runs four times a day or something. So, again, we had to take a taxi. Fortunately, it was much cheaper this time, and we got to see ANIMATRONIC DINOSAURS!!! And, even

Right before we got eaten

cooler, a sizable collection of dinosaur and prehistoric mammal bones. There were also taxidermied models of all the different fauna in the area, as well as plants and so forth. Pretty cool. There was even this crazy display/diorama of a dinosaur excavation with mannequins dressed as paleontologists and stuff. The crazy part is that it’s built into the floor about 20 feet down and there are huge sheets of glass covering it, so you walk over it and look down. It’s pretty freaky, because you feel like your going to fall in. Needless to say, many of the adults were scared shitless to set foot on the thing.

Standing on the floaty floor...

The special exhibit was on the coelocanth, and they had these weird eel-like relatives in tanks that had little proto-feet. They were using them to crawl around in the tank as we all stood around gawking.

Weird fishy thing

Fun in Takasaki

hello

Yesterday, I went into Takasaki with my boss’s husband (the same guy who drives me to work on Mondays when I work at Yoshii) to pick up their daughter. He knew I wanted to see the haniwa on display at the Takasaki museum, so he thought we three could go together. After picking up his daughter, our first stop was this awesome Chinese restaurant on the top floor of the tallest building in Takasaki.  It had one of those fast elevators that took us up 27 floors in a few seconds. At the top, we could see out over the river and to the mountains. Mr. Imai suggested a particular dish on the menu, which, when it arrived, shocked me by how much larger is was in reality after seeing the tiny photo on the menu. It was a hell of a lot of food. And it was really hot. I sat there, sweating and eating, but then, all of us were. After lunch, we went to the museum. They only allowed photos to be taken of the reproductions at the top of the tour, so that’s what follows.

Mr Imai and his ancient sumo friend

Court figures

In case you don’t know, haniwa are clay funerary figures from the Yayoi/Kofun period of Japan – from about 300-600 CE. There were quite a few haniwa – more than I’ve ever seen in one place before, and many of them were from Gunma or the neighboring area. I also was lucky enough to see some of the really famous ones that I’ve only seen it books before.

Check out that chicken in the background

After that, we wandered around the adjacent modern art museum, which was awesome. Once again, no photos of there. The first room was long and narrow, with high walls that were covered in quilted fabric, as was the floor. There was a young couple, presumably the artists, that were sitting at a sewing machine and making things. The next room was carpeted, and we had to take off our shoes. There were large paintings on the walls, with analogous futons that were sewn to be mirror images lying on the floor. I assume the couple from before had made them. Different parts of each futon moved around, so you could rearrange the composition, and there were little things under the pieces that moved, like cats, fish, and lizards. The next room was covered in murals made with pieces of masking tape that had been drawn on with a sharpie (first) and stuck to the wall (second). They were incredibly elaborate and huge. There was also a mural made of leaves, sticks, and other natural bits that were just sitting on a table. After that was a room filled with television sets playing clever videos. There was one where the artist appeared to be climbing on a bunch of objects set in front of the television. Another had him walking down the street, until he got halfway across the screen where a water bottle had been set (again in front of the tv, not in the video), and he would “swim” when he got to that part. There was another installation filled with a dozen or so televisions with stuff hanging in front of them, and a video camera that filmed that passersby. When I was on the televisions, I tried to grab all the objects hanging in front of me. Pretty neat. Yet another room had a gigantic table-soccer game (like foosball, but the kind where each pole controls only one player and you can make them turn in a circle) where each soccer man was the size of a small child. Quite a few people (including me) tried it out and played against each other.

Hangin' out with Guan Yin

After the museum, we headed up to the giant kannon statue at the top of one of the outlying hills. It’s something like 60 meters tall, and I guess you can climb up inside of it during the day. After that, we stopped by a rather elaborate shrine, but it was closed.

Big feet

Shinto shrine in a style similar to that really famous one on the 10¥ coins