Fungus, Dinosaurs, Mark Shultz, and Tentacles

This far too much of a fun day, I drove myself crazy with how much time I wasted taking pictures rather than having fun drawing. It was the

ANyway, Tokyo National Museum of Natural History. The traveling exhibit was about mushrooms and fungus, which was actually pretty cool, but in retrospect, I was bitter with how much time I wasted in there. At least I got some good reference pictures. I’m set for life if I ever need to refs for fungus. I'm not going to post any of it here now. Not worth wasting my time.

Also, a note on mascots. Everything has a mascot here. Absolutely everything. So even the fungus did. Actaully the fungus had multiple mascots. They're kinda cute, but I'm kinda seeing them everywhere. Even in vending machines on the street as cell phone keychains. It seems random cutesy things become very popular for no particular reason (other than cuteness, I suppose). I also heard that although Ponyo on a Cliff was pretty succesful, some of the hype was dulled due to the fact the theme song was made so popular.

Digression.

Something to be noted in retrospect- not being able to read anything actually helps a lot ot get through the museum with out wasting any time. I was really interested in everything but all I could read was the Latin describing scientific names. The history of man exhibit looked painfully informative, but I couldn’t catch a word. All I could see was that the wax Neanderthals were creepily lifelike, to the point I kept looking over my shoulder to see if its eyes were following me.

The event of the day is drawing dinos with Mark Shultz. I didn’t know his work too well before the trip. I knew a little because of Sara’s love of his work (I’m still trying to muster up the courage to ask for an autograph for her), but there’s little that can prepare you for drawing with an receiving tips from someone so mightily talented. He helped me flesh out the stegosaurus skeleton as I looked over his shoulder at his own example. (I'll show drawings later, when i'm home with a scanner.)

Something must also be said about his lack of ego. I’ve never met such an amazingly nice and inspirational person.

On that note, we got on the topic of dinosaur artists, and I mentioned my favorite, James Gurney. To which he replied “Oh yeah, he invited me over to lunch not too long ago.” (or something along the lines.) Yeah. Wow.

Anyway, before this, I spent waaay too much time photographing the taxidermy animals, which were incredible, and for once didn’t creep me out (except the birds. Taxidermy birds just don’t work due to the lack of preening). I keep kicking myself about not taking more time drawing. I only got a few lame sketches.

Akihabara was pretty interesting, I didn’t really get to experience it this night, but later really got into it and it’s officially my favorite part of urban Tokyo. (More on it later, obviously.)

First off, the stores close early, at around 7 or 8, which is odd since it’s the ‘electrical district’. I personally see it as the anime/giant robot/Gundam district, but the amount of lights make electric appropriate as well.

Tagged along with one of the professors, three of the artists and some other kids into a restaurant since we were falling over starving. What drew us in was the chef, placed at the window making some food on kebabs, which in the restaurant (alongside the extra ‘Engrish’ menu) were simply called ‘sticks’.

Mysteriously, before ordering we were given earthenware mugs filled halfway with...something, and in the center of it was a tentacle.
I was the first one to realize it was a tentacle, as it was raw, and otherwise looked like grey jelly. Mine had the ‘advantage’ of having a suction cup sticking out the side.

It took come bravery, but I had it, and it wasn’t too bad. There was some spice in it that distracted from the ‘wet’ texture. It took a lot of chewing.

The rest of the food took way too long to come, I think because we were obnoxious stupid Americans, but that’s not to say we were treated rudely. Rudeness is a rarity here. I kind of wish Americans could follow suit. It’s going to be hard coming back home.

Anyway the food took so long that by the time we got out, there was only half an hour to enjoy Akihabara, which was no time at all, really. I saw some tempting Ghibli stuff in one place, and messed with those keychain vending machines for myself and Christmas presents.