Ninja, Samurai and… shopping?
Today was more of a have-a-go affair, after breakfast (pretty much a repeat of yesterday’s) we took a stroll down the street to find a taxi, and found ourselves a whole queue of them! Stretching the language barrier once more we got to where we needed to be for our museum activities for the day. This was aparantly in a semi-pedestrianised covered arcade.
We were a little early, so we decided to wander the arcade and stumbled upon Nishiki Market, we knew it was close, just didn’t realise how close! Lots of food stuffs on offer, some ready to eat (as long as you do it then and there, walking and eating is bad manners), some less so like the whole dried side of fish used to make bonito flakes which can be the base for ramen and miso. Little souvenir shops and larger, deeper ones that seemed to be markets unto themselves. I noticed that many of the stands had signs asking that people didn’t take photos, which I can understand with it being a famous market, but people still need to make a living without fearing the camera, hence my rather generic roof shot.
The main attraction for today however was the samurai and ninja museum. We booked a brief sword lesson, and were not dissapointed. A few swings with practice blades, being taught how to draw and sheath, then the big event, cutting a rolled up tatami mat with a genuine 300 year old Katana. Would love to say I got it first time, but I got some good cuts in the end. That was cool. We then got a tour of the museum, brought along for a brief history of the samurai, and a guide to their philosophy as it stood in the Edo period.
Upstairs we had a go at some ninja arts, throwing some shuriken and firing a blowdart or two, then we got to see the sensei who had been teaching us show off his stuff with some katana forms. On the way out my brother and I snagged a mini samurai each, and mum a blunt shuriken each.
Satisfied with our exhertions, we turned out into the main street in search of lunch, stumbling upon a McDonalds. Having heard that it’s one of those ‘you should try it once’ kind of thing we decided to walk in. I have to say I’m not a fan of McDonalds at the best of times, and I would have to say this time met expectaions, in that I still wasn’t too enamoured with it, but it filled a hole. My brother had the same triyaki Burger and sounded more impressed though, so I don’t know if it was just bias.
With it being two o’clock, we thought a stroll down through the shops would be a nice way to get back to our hotel. We found a couple of nice things but we hit a bit of a goldmine in the form of tokyu hands, which I think could be deemed a department store? Where we found both nano block Pokemon, and a whole shelf dedicated to studio ghibli, which I couldn’t walk away from with my wallet unopened. There was some fascinating stationary in there too, but I didn’t partake as much could be bought from home, or would go unused.
Dinner was an interesting affair, and a reminder that not all experiments result in tasty food, we went to try out a restaurant my travelling companions had discovered the night before, turns out it was a okonomiyaki / yakisoba place, good idea in principle! We were sat in a little family room in the back of the place where we had to remove our shoes. I ordered a yakisoba with some ‘shrimp’ and pork, but I was disapointed to find that I certainly did not agree with the sauce on my noodles, and ended up stealing some of my mum’s! And I thought I was picking a safer option! Ahh well, win some lose some.