4th week

I visited the Japanese Sword Museum with Josh, Haruka, and Chiharu on July 8th. It took us a while to find the place, but the experience was worth the wait. Even though the museum was quite small, the collection included a mishmash of "Katanas", or "刀”。 There was a Katana specifically used for "seppuku", which means to commit suicide by disembowelment. I could swear that I saw tiny strings of blood on the sword. Maybe the sword's last job wasn't too long ago...



We then tried to visit the NTT museum and Tokyo Opera museum in the Hatsudai station building, but to our disappointment, those two museums were closed for reconstruction. This would be the first of my three experiences to find museums closed for visitors; I now somewhat regret my decision to buy the Grutt Passbook. The Passbook, for a price of 2000 yen, allows me to enter most museums in Tokyo for free or at a discount. I now have to visit more museums to make my purchase worthy, but I guess in the end that's a good thing.

It did end up being a good thing because I decided to visit more museums with Drisana the next week. We went to the Tokyo station area and perused antiques in the Tokyo Film Museum/Contemporary Arts museum. Most of the items in the film museum were esoteric to me, and so I did not linger in the exhibition hall too much. One thing of interest, however, is the remnants of the Rashomon movie. I actually downloaded the movie before but neglected to watch it. Drisana explained its plot to me, and I found it fascinating. It was about a Japanese woman who intentionally created a love triangle by prodding her husband, a samurai, and a philanderer, who was originally a ninja. The two men ended up dead and imprisoned, but in the process the woman was able to concoct a lengthy affair that made something out of nothing. The museum had the film's original promotional poster.

Here is a picture from the museum tour.



I never liked museums when I was a kid, but now I find them stimulating. I guess this is a paradigm of an "acquired taste." Fortunately, I still do not regret not being an Art Major in college.

Moving on to the past week. Nothing happened during the week, but fast forward to Friday, I did speed dating, clubbed a little bit, went to my good friend Jin Li's house in Komagome, and ended the 3-day weekend with a BBQ by the Tamagawa river. The content of my weekend activities was not as PG as the weekdays, but I had soooo much fun, especially at the BBQ (Monday afternoon). Drisana brought her good friend Meghan from Kyoto over to the BBQ. We ate some sumptuous chicken and Japanese Yakisoba. The group mingled very well I thought. I even met some students from Aoyama Gakuin Daigaku, a college located in Shibuya.