Japan, Tokyo, 23 July 2014

Initially we did not even want to spend time in Tokyo. Just a big city, too little interesting things to sea. Never judge before you have seen it. The capital of Japan shows trends earlier and more clearly then elsewhere. We see many young people wearing trendy clothing, or more precise: creating the trend. Some women even wear challenging clothing, showing more of their body than would be acceptable elsewhere in Japan.

More flashy advertisements on the streets are visible and at time a very heavy pedestrian traffic. In Shibuya, on the central crossiing 'the Picadilly Circus' of Tokyo, we met a Californian filmmaker setting up many time delayed foto camera's to record the crossing of hordes of people.

The first night we ambled through the neighbourhood and stumbled on a huge black cube building with a even larger white turnip on the top. Glass white lit stairs all around led to a single small entrance housing a Walloon restaurant serving Belgian beers and culinary specialties. No other potential inhabitants of this huge construction were visible. And yes, when asked they confirmed that their restaurant occupied all five (!) floors inside this huge cube. Given the amount of people coming in and out we thought this highly unlikely.

Today Julie insisted on visiting a Sumo museum and I negotiated a visit to the Tokyo fish market, the Tsujiki. A meal in a sushi restaurant gave us some of the best fish ever (apart from our own caught fish on board Stamper of course). After that we strolled through the many fish stalls and excellent knife shops for filleting fish. I acquired a special sanding stone for sharpening my damascener steel knife on board Stamper. It has two grades of sanding, the finest sanding is really a polishing stone.

At the Sumo museum, really a very large sumo stadium, we were surprised to find an exhibition of small innovative business from all over Asia. We were offered many tastings of new sorts of food, 3d printed jewelry and high tech deep sea observation equipment. Only when walking out we noticed a small side door that led to a single room containing the whole of the sumo museum. And yes, there was a ticket office operating for all of Japan, to sell places at the next sumo match. The only one available within our time in Japan happened to be in Nagoya (400 km soiuth of Tokyo). Price for reserved seat ranged from 100$ to 200$ and if we wanted we could try to walk in at 08:00 in the morning to try and get a standing seat for 20$. These would likely be sold out after 10:00. Much to the regret of Julie we decided to skip this. She found the foresight of having a sumo wrestler being thrown out of the ring onto the first row seats a fascinating prospect that she still sees as being on her bucket list.

Before Tokyo a short stay in Hiroshima to visit the site of the nuclear explosion and the monuments to remember. The city of Hiroshima has done admirable work to give an objective view of the history and make a strong case to abandon all nuclear arms. It is a pity that the momentum of this movement is lost in turmoil of international politics.