Tokyo and Jimbocho (Mon 2/15)

Today is really rainy, so I stayed in late, and started looking for a good onsen ryokan in Yamanouchi for a few days of my last week here (it's near an outdoor hot spring called Jigokudani where macaque monkeys bathe in the snow). Anyway, I headed toward Tokyo thinking I would find Jimbocho the same way I did last time ... walk straight north from the north-east side of the imperial grounds. Then I remembered the rain.

There's a fancy shopping complex attached to Tokyo station called the Marunouchi building, and I found a oden place on one of the restaurant floors. You take your shoes off when you go in, and put them in a little cubby on the wall. Then all the seats are around a big pot of various stewing things (sorry I didn't get pictures, but it felt weird since everyone in the place was effectively sitting at the same table .. maybe I'll go back later and take some). I ordered the saborodon gohan set (rice covered with ground chicken and a little ginger), which comes with oden with either 3, 4 or 5 items. I got the daikon (of course), a little round potato (something like じゃが丸 or jyagamaru), an egg, and then something I had no idea about .. just to be a little adventurous. Now I really wish I had taken a picture. Anyway, it's served as kind of a hodgepodge of all the things you ordered in a kind of broth. And it was delicious.

Then I took the train back up to Kanda (since I figured that was a closer way of getting to Jimbocho), and finally managed to find the place (after going down into a subway station just to see a map).

I found the same antique book store I went to last time, and I got a few books. Then I found a regular book store and found an entire section on shodo (書道) or the art of writing (with a brush). I picked up a few reference books there, too. Here's what I got



From the top left shodo lesson book specifically for the kaisho (楷書) style or printed style of writing, to the top right book which is a dictionary of how around 850 characters are written as well as hiragana and katakana. The bottom books from the left are: an old book showing examples of how to write 1000 characters, a book of Buddhist poems, and a book of a bunch of old art prints.

Here's some samples from them. The lesson book:



The dictionary



The old 1000 character reference (unfortunately some of the pages are marked on ... like the first couple of pages that have a drawing on them)





The Bhuddist poems



The old art prints