A Semi-Literate Walk through the Edo Period and Expensive Pokemon

Edo Museum day. Another museum that would have been informative if I could actually read. They did have a little more English than the Natural Museum, (which was none at all, over there) but I found myself drifting off anyway, as everything I found myself deeply interested had no subtitle, and the things I was only somewhat into had a paragraph or two.

They had a lot of scale dioramas of Tokyo in different time periods. They were absolutely great for reference on my Animation in Tokyo project. I’m hoping to involve ravens, and the main problem with all the reference I’ve been taking is it’s from human eye level. Finally, I could get reference pictures from a birds eye view.

There were also a lot of scrolls and original woodblock prints that we weren’t allowed to take photos of, though I adored them. I wanted a book of their selection but couldn’t find much in the gift shop.

Another important thing to mention is at the beginning of the day, we were told to have one good drawing by the end of our time there to turn in to the visiting artists. Three students would be picked (one sequential and one animation) to have a goodbye dinner with them. I won’t lie, I got anxious about it. It ruined any groove I had to draw that day, but I talked to a friend and kind of get myself set straight. In the end I got a really good drawing out of it after relaxing. For now, here’s only a photo of the boat I drew. I loved this thing.

Ah, and in the end, said friend got to go to the dinner, and I got to go shopping instead, so it all worked out for the better eh?

And shopping to where? But the Pokemon Center of course!

Alas, it was actually very disappointing. I’m one of those oldbies that only likes the first 151, and most of what they sold was Diamond and Pearl characters. What a letdown.

But they had these awesome shirts I wanted more than anything, but were ridiculously expensive. They were all designer-like- where you had to double take to see it was a Pokemon shirt at all. Example being a coat of arms with the animals holding the shield being a pair of Mewtwo. But, only at the Pokemon Center would you have to buy a shirt for $45. Maybe they’re just converting prices from the game, where prices are so inflated that a bike costs 1,000,000 poke-dollars.

I’m a geek. We’ve come to terms with this.

After this, we went to Shibuya, so I got to see a little more of that- a different part than Ayumi had shown me. We went to one of the many Mandarake’s, a manga/book/geekery-paraphernalia kind of store, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite not spending too much there. Then later went to “Tokyo Hands” which seems to be an everything store. And everything as in more variety than Wal-Mart. I walked in thinking it was a Japanese version of Micheals, or JoAnn Fabrics… then went upstairs to find everything else from jewelry to furniture to art supplies to camping equipment. Downstairs even had a woodshop not unlike Home Depot.

It was really confusing. Didn’t help that not only did it have about 8 floors, but each floor had an a, b, and c, floor.

Everything’s built up, rather than out here, but that just felt like walking through an Escher drawing.