Free Day Continued October 7. 2006

As I mentioned in the previous post, Saturday was free day for the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Participants (That's me.).

I am very interested in arts and crafts and plan to teach some lessons on traditional Japanese Crafts at Fernwood, so I left the Tokyo National Museum and headed off to the Tokyo Traditional Crafts Center. I have already ridden on the subway (Metro) a number of times, but there are also above ground trains.

We took the JR Line. I think this stands for Japan Railroad. Our station was below a very large, fancy shopping mall called the Metropolitan Plaza. This was like shopping at Mayfair, except fancier and even more expensive. I didn't take a picture of the shopping center, but I like this sculpture of owls that I saw there.

The Handicraft Center is located right in the shopping center. It is really like a museum where everything is for sale! The items in the center were very beautiful, but much too expensive for me to buy. There were displays and artifacts from all of Japan's Prefectures. (A prefecture is like a state in the United States.)

We ended our free day at a very popular shopping area. It was very crowded! This is an enjoyable place to see Japanese teenagers wearing a lot of interesting clothes. It was hard to take pictures, because people were moving so fast, but I took a few pictures.

One problem with traveling around Tokyo is trying to use the restrooms. They are very clean and ther are many bathrooms. The problem is that many of the toilets are very high-tech. Sometimes it is hard to know how to flush, especially when you can't read Japanese. The control panel is very complicated.

I had to get back to the hotel by 9:00 pm to send my luggage to the next city. On Sunday we travel to a different city, Chigasaki, in Kanagawa Prefecture. That is where we will visit schools. I can't wait!