TOKYO Shibuya and Komaba

Flew in on Monday afternoon, very psyched because I watched four videos on the plane about sake tasting and famous Japanese chefs...  Met my former student Yuki, who is from Japan and is now a professor at Chuo university here.  The Komaba campus of U-Tokyo (which houses the Center for Pacific and American Studies and other humanities fields)  is in a quiet, leafy neighborhood, two short subway stops from Shibuya, a bustling inner-city district.   In the area near the subway/rail station there are tons of people, lots of side streets, with different specialties, eg video games, karaoke, cafes, shopping, etc. etc. There is a so-called "lovers lane" where the hotels have hourly rates. 

We went out and explored a 7-story electronics store (all real estate here is vertical), with different floors for cameras, video games, computers, cell phones, big screen TV, rice makers and washing machines. I bought a Sony camera lens that snaps onto the iPhone and uses wi-fi to send image to your phone.  You can also use it detached, say put it on a tripod (this would be great for the archive) or hold in one hand while you take shot with phone in the other hand. It fits into the palm of my hand and is very light.

Then we went to a ramen joint.  You order by machine on the sidewalk (which is common here).  Thankfully there are pictures.  Inside there is a long U-shaped counter; customers can walk only in one direction (exit on other side) because it often gets really crowded.  We had shiyou with pork, the broth was rich and the noodles very springy.  One wonders why in the USA they give you so little meat and charge you so much more.

Today I had to work on my lectures so I did not venture far from campus.  Went out for a walk through the neighborhood and a lovely park.  Had katsu-don at this little corner place.  Here, the machine for ordering food was inside, though they did have a small English menu with photos.

Then I went searching for a store to buy some fruit.  Finally found a guy with a small produce market.  His vegetables were gorgeous but his fruit selection was small.  There were some nice mangoes, but very expensive, and the stickers read "Ponce"--which is in Puerto Rico.  I asked him if they were imported (the Japanese word for imported is, according to my iphone, "inpoto") and he shrugged.

Little girls walking home from school.  The boys have blue backpacks but the same yellow hats.