Yasukuni Shrine is the controversial shrine dedicated to the soldiers who died in World War II. (Remember a few years back when the prime minister got crap for going there?) It was much more...regal looking than I expected. There's a museum right next to it that has relics and things from that time period. I only went on the first floor though, since the rest of it required a ticket to get in. Overall, it kind of gave me the creeps. Usually Nick and I both go throw money and pray at shrines, but decided not to at this one. Here's a picture of the statue for mothers, who took care of everything while the men were out at war.
It's pretty 'fancy' leading up to the actual shrine since it has statues and things in front of it. The lighting was horrible because of the placement of the sun, so a lot of my picturs are backlit, but hey, what can you do? Anyway, there were also a bunch of statues that I couldn't read, so I'm not sure I got a full understanding of everything there, but there was a Kiwani's fountain that I thought was odd. Tokyo is the first place to have an international Kiwani's Club, apparently, though I'm not sure why they chose to add to all the memorial type things in the Yasukuni Shrine precinct. It looked neat though.
And being the Tokyoites that we are, we met up with friends later that night to go to Shinjuku. (Oh, Kabuki-cho...>_<) We had some awesome Thai food that was nice and spicy, then made our way over to Ikkyu, which is apparently the cheapest drinking establishment in Tokyo. (Don't worry, no one got plastered.) We closed off the night with an hour of karaoke, which was amazing since they had my current favorite song, Heart Station that came out only 3 days before. I made it back just in time to catch the last train home. ^_^
For more pictures, check my Flickr.
