Senso-ji Temple

Senso-ji Temple is a short walk from our house. Masses of worshipers among clouds of aloes wood gather at the huge site. Lots of tourists in cute kimonos and cool little shops are all around. I bought some knit gloves here. It is cold and windy in Tokyo! Especially at night.

Here is a link to the official website where you can find more information including history and special events.

Sumida River Bank

Along the Sumida River: Tokyo Sky Tree and Asahi Breweries headquarters. This famous Tokyo building designed by Philippe Starck, is topped by the “Asahi Flame” (aka the Golden Poop). The main building is meant to resemble a tall glass of beer complete with foam head on top.

Everyday here is bright sun and blue skies so far…but chilly!

The Skytree is tall and imposing. From a distance, because of all the outer skeleton, it almost looks like it is made out of wood. Every city seems to have it pointy tower somewhere in the skyline and this is Tokyo’s most famous. It kind of resembles our CN Tower in Toronto but with more prominent bones! Here is a link to information in English for Skytree visits.

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Today was our first day out in Tokyo and I was excited to ride the subway and make a test recording of some of the station sounds along the way. I wired up my backpack and we went out to explore.

It seems like every station has it’s own music..listen with headphones or earbuds if you can.

I was inspired to try “field recording” city sounds when I saw Hou Hsiao Hsien’s film Cafe Lumiere. The famous Taiwanese director made this film in Japan. The main character is Yoko. Her close friend Hajime runs a bookstore and is also working on a sound based art project. He travels all over Tokyo collecting train station sounds with a field recorder. Hajime uses the sounds to make an interactive computer map of the Tokyo subway system and links the sound of each station to its location. It is a quiet and relaxed film with beautiful photography of Tokyo.

This one:

For anyone traveling to Tokyo, here is a good website about the metro system . Google/Apple maps also seem to be a pretty reliable source of information for getting around Tokyo. In contrast, Google is much less useful in Korea..as you will see later.