Final free days report SUMMARY (warning: only includes some running at the very end): Friday - had a moving day visiting franci's old neighborhood and Sengakuji with grave sites of the 47 lordless samurai ronin who had to commit seppuku on February 4, 1703 for killing the lord who was responsible for their master’s own seppuku. Saturday - met the long lost and renamed running group that had been sponsoring weekly 5/10K fun runs and an annual marathon and 50K around the Imperial Palace in the 1980's and now sponsoring full marathons every Saturday. =========================== Thanks for all the Tokyo ideas for free time I enjoyed at the end of an extended trip to Tokyo. Didn’t include any running except for a sayonara lap around the Imperial Palace recounted below case of interest, especially in case anyone else might have Tokyo plans. A. Thursday, February 5, 2009 1. Tsukiji Fish Market breakfast (8:00am) uni plus, miso soup, salad, pickles, rice, tea . 2. Sengakuji (temple) - long story for francesca Thanks for recommending Sengakuji as a possible destination site as I ended up this trip with a couple of days of free time. I knew the famed story of how Lord Asano and his ronin had committed seppuku there exactly 306 years ago on February 4, 1703 but I'd never been there. http://www.jadkins.com/archives/sengakuji_temple_resting_place_of_the_47_ronin.html The visit was sealed when, by coincidence the same day I read your suggestion, I was in the Imperial Palace Garden at the very site where, after nearly two years of careful planning and deception, the 47 had slain the lord whose perfidy had caused their Lord Asano to have to commit seppuku at Sengakuji in 1701. A historical sidebar explanation stated that the avengement resulted in the ronins having to commit their own seppuku exactly 306 years before on February 4, 1703 at Sengakuji. I knew the story well and had even seen the kabuki play Chushingura based on it but had never been to either the site of the incident in the Imperial Palace grounds or the Sengakuji graves. I arrived at the Sengakuji Subway Station where you used to live from downtown Tokyo on a grey-clouded next morning and found the temple tucked up a small residential street just up the hill. It was almost deserted except for myself and a half dozen Japanese visitors placing incense sticks at the graves and clapping for the departed. . . Sengakuji (temple) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . incense buring at sites Apparently, the main commemorative festivities take place in December on the anniversary of the actual slaying. I’ve seen many memorials before in the U.S. and abroad with a profound historical awe but this time I was overpowered with almost being able to feel the pride of the 47 otherwise dejected and dishonored lives that had knelt down on the same ground right underneath my feet 306 years ago for the honor of committing seppuku for their lord's death. The visit was a lesson in loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor that remain a paragon of a virtue and honorable living in Japan to this day. . Lord Asano grave . . . . . . . . . . . . . some of the 47 ronin graves 3. jogging around franci's Sengakuji. Being so filled with the feelings of that day made me decide I wanted to go back and see the Imperial Palace site again that I’d only seen yesterday for the first time. However, first, I would run a couple of blocks around the perimeter of the temple and take pictures probably of many sites francesca used to see too. Maybe some would be remindful of her emotions of those days just as had happened to me while visiting some of my own familiar sights at various sites of past sojourns. I turned a sharp right right out of the entrance and ran by a little barefoot guy statue watering a tiny flower box, then stopped at a kindergarten school/playground with a dozen moms dutifully watching their children play. It was up and up little hills with the twisting one-lane residential streets seeming to veer more and more to the left instead of going around the perimeter to the right that would get me back to Sengakuji Station in time to return downtown in time for the 3:30pm last entry into the Imperial Palace Gardens. Streets were getting so narrow I had to flatten up against a 5-meter stone wall when a mini-delivery trunk needed to squeeze by. However, all things come to an end at last and the narrow streets finally emerged to a regular two-laner with signal lights, crosswalks, and taxis furiously streaming by on the way to a likely station destination somewhere up ahead. Though the time was nigh, I couldn’t resist ducking into the grounds of several little temples tucked in amongst the five and six story condo/business buildings along the main drag. In particular, down a long concrete stair case squeezed between two of the bigger buildings to a dank and dark temple quietly overlooking dark green moss garden with tiny, one-meter miniature arched bridge and chiseled rock shine reflecting into a little pool with happy little orange goldfish seeking a handout. Standing under white and purple-blossomed plum trees, I complied wity some bread parts from a packet of cream puffs. As the semblance of jogging I was doing while really sightseeing brought the station into sight at the bottom of the hill, I stopped at a convenience store for some steaming o-den vegetables and fish cakes steeped in warm broth that just had to be taken back to the by-then nearby Sengakuji to be eaten. 4. Imperial Palace Garden Park Because of running there so much over the years, I know all the train station exits near the Imperial Palace grounds by heart so was able to take the Omote Station exit to get to the main Omote Gate with minutes to spare before the gate closed to the day’s visitations at 3:30pm. I was still soaking in the emotions of the day at the site of the 47 ronins’ revenge killing when the speakers announced the park was closing at 4:00 pm. B. Friday, February 6, 2009 1. Breakfast (Tsukiji Fish Market - 9:00am) - fried oysters w/miso soup, salad, pickles, rice, tea. . 2. Tokyo Municipality Building Observation Deck (5:00pm - Shinjuku) - a real happening with hundreds of tourists and locals watching the last rays of the day paint a rose-red orange backdrop to the sillouete of Mt. Fuji on the western horizon. Picked up a city-wide aerial view mini-poster with Tokyo Marathon route and the start on the street below clearly visible. <>2/28/2009 - hint/hint)>>> 3. Onsen/hotsprings - milk baths, bubbling springs, iron reds, cobalt blue, sulfur yellow, alkalines, ice dips, nibbling fish, multi-directional/ multi-jet/multi-pressure jacuzzis, saunas, and head-to-foot masseuses or only foot or scalp or in between. Thanks posalina/ilenelina; I hope to remember enough of it all to return the favor at the June RnR in Seattle. . . . . . . C. Saturday, February 7, 2009 1. Breakfast (Tsukiji Fish Market - 8:00am) - fresh raw tuna from the morning’s auction, uni (sea urchin eggs), ikura (salmon caviar) on bowl of rice with river clam miso soup and tea. 2. Running (9:30am) - right about half way around the Imperial Palace on my final day’s sayonara lap, see a banner for “Takebashi Marathon Club” with some guys right in my chronology in various stages of signing in or something and swashing down some Pocari Sweat only to take off again for another lap. . I asked them if they had ever heard of the Global Running Association I’d been trying to track down and which had been doing weekly 5 and 10K fun runs every Sunday and annual marathons and a 50K ultra around the Palace back in the eighties and was overcome with disbelief and joy to learn that, though Global had passed on to the happy running grounds, it had been reincarnated as TMA to offer weekly marathons around the Imperial Palace every Saturday and another marathon on Sunday in an outlying park. It was a fitting finale for a long stay in Tokyo and many solo runs around the Imperial Palace to do the last lap with Shojima-san doing his 1,126th or so marathon event. Imperial Palace panorama 3. Tokyo (3:35pm) - Seattle (6:55 am) - flying 4,954 miles through the night in 8hr/20 min at 6sec/mile to arrive on the same morning 8hr40minutes before the flight departed. 4. Running (9:30am) - one 2.8 mile lap around Green Lake in Seattle plus a little extra for a second 5K at exactly the same time nineteen hours later. 5. bikietm charity moment - forewent personal vow to eschew giving to individuals (after seeing my $10 some years ago go directly into a liquor store) by slipping a 1,000 yen bill (~$10.95) into a pack of remaining strawberry cream puffs and giving to a local derelict watching the palace runners with so much leisure time stream by his park bench. ================ end final post ================ original post date 2/3/2009 With what-turned-out-to-be a month　plus project finally wrapping up in Tokyo today (tuesday), I have the rest of the week of to do whatever I want. In several previous sojouns of living over here, I`ve done nearly everthing thing there is to do from climbing Fuji 25 times in every kind of footwear (and not footwear) imaginable to becoming the Japanese equivalent of an Alaskan sourdough like　when I was working on the Yukon River in college days (it is still hugging the girl isn`t it erika?). Just on this trip I`ve run the Tokyo Marathon course (except just one-way on the two out-and-backs and took the train the other way), saw almost 20 other pairs　of bare feet on circuits to-and-from and around the Imperial Palace, soaked in hot springs with so many ultrananobubbles that it looked like milk and felt like being pricked by a billion tickling pins, eaten some new delicacies such as crunchy, seasoned eel backbone and enough of an old favorite I apprenticed on a long time ago that would have killed lesser eaters (in fact, two people died the other day from dining at an unlicensed premise), to say nothing of getting eaten by so many nibbling fish in area hot springs it had us laughing out loud it was so ticklish with hundreds of little finny friends nibbling their way down through as much epidermis as possible in the allotted 15 minutes. For me, my treat I`ve always wanted to do will happen with moving into a hotel tomorrow right across the street from the famed Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market. Over the years, I`ve eaten as many as possible of the hundreds of species streaming through the wholesale stalls throughout the year to restaurants and stores all over the place but I`ll sure be looking for more. I`ve got suiyoubi, mokuyoubi and kinyoubi, I mean Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to enjoy anything that Tokyo has to offer and, since I`ve decided what I want to do is be close by Tsukiji, I`d like to try anything else you can recommend or want someone to try out for you too. Let me me know whatever you would do with a free day in one of the most fascinating cities of the world. If it costs money do do, you can reimburse me if I do it okay. I just hope speaking almost non-stop Japanese for 40 days except for English calls back to the states hasn`t caused any slippage in my otherwise clear, succinct, lucid postings. ps - want anything? I`ve picked up some possible prizes for the bellydancing, pedal　manipulations, and story/poetry parts of the Seattle Rock`n`Roll talent show and will be looking for others. However, all the pocket kleenexes I`ve been collecting at store give-away promotions at the train stations aren`t for your nose fazzie.

You know Tokyo better than I do but the last time I was there I loved the fish market. Enjoy!

so glad to see that all that japanese speak hasn't affected your english postings Tet. Clear as mud. Nothing's changed mta: I like those little smooth rocks with japanese etchings in them. and good tea. loves good tea! no toxic fish for me though.

Here's a second on the pictures.

DisneySea. And give us a popcorn report from there!

I think you need Saki and Irish coffee's ... I've missed you, see you at Yakima. hugs arf

I would spend the day trying to figure out what the heck you are saying most of the time TimmiBo

What an adventure, and complete with pictures! Thank you for sharing it with us.