Yoyogi Park 「代々木公園」

Yoyogi Park is 53 hectares of trees and grass and ponds. On the weekends it is transformed from a mere park to an amazing cultural display of the stranger sub-cultures thriving in Tokyo.

On Sundays in particular, it is not uncommon to hear music at various places throughout the park. One one side there are guys playing bongo drums, on the other there are a group of men dressed like John Travolta from Grease, with the slick rock n' roll hair and everything, pulling their rock moves to whatever is playing on their boom-box. In the middle there was a guy who I'm 98% sure was on drugs. He had techno playing, and was painting while he raved to it. The end product was very alternative, and the entire process was intriguing to watch.

We didn't do much besides meander around the park and sit under the shade next to the pond, chatting about what we're going to do while in Tokyo and when we want to move on.

We stopped for ice cream at one point-- watermelon flavor, with little chocolate bits as seeds-- and took some photos of a crow because it was huge!

After a lazy day by the pond, we traveled home, stopping in Akihabara to grab some tendon 「天丼」and udon「うどん」 (tempura prawns and vegetables on rice with udon noodles as a side dish) before going back to Taka's house.

All-in-all, a good day. We talked about a lot of stuff that needed to be discussed in light of some unexpected issues popping up. But all is good now, though I think we'll be leaving Tokyo earlier than we previously intended. Not that it matters-- we've seen most of what we want to see, leaving another couple of weeks for us to see the rest.