Today was my mother's first full day in Japan, so there was much on the agenda with nowhere near the required energy to accomplish it all. Nevertheless, I gave it a valiant go when I showed her around Harajuku Station for the afternoon/evening. We started with the UKIYO-E (浮世絵, or "pictures of the floating world") exhibition at the Ota Memorial Museum of Art. This genre is the main form of woodblock printing that is so famous to Japanese art. Most famous are the 36 Views of Mt Fuji, which most people have probably seen without ever realizing what they are looking at - the most popular print is shown to the right.

Afterward, I took her along Harajuku's notoriously strange back-streets where COSPLAY shops are in abundance, as are other semi-perverse oddities. Our destination was MEIJI JINGU (明治神宮), which is the most-frequented shrine in all of Tokyo. Shown to the left is one of the massive gates, made from Japanese cedar, through which one enters the park. Once inside, there exists roughly 700,000 sq. meters (175 acres) with some 100,000 trees and 365 different species.

It was a somewhat rainy day today so we missed out on the COSPLAY aficionados who typically hang out around the park's entrance, posing in photographs for ecstatic (shocked?) foreigners. Nevertheless, the rain also scared away most tourists, so the park was even more peaceful than usual.

Built for the Meiji Emperor and his wife nearly 100 years ago, this shrine is a forest of peace in what is otherwise the world's most hectic city (with the possible exception of New York City). I demonstrated how to perform the Shinto rituals, such as cleansing one's self and praying correctly at the inner shrine. Such serenity really is a pleasant thing to find in the mayhem of Tokyo - often foreigner's biggest complaint about the city is there is nowhere to simply escape.

The next item on the agenda for the afternoon was shopping, which "is a mother's prerogative." Embarrassingly enough, this is the first time I have been to a shopping mall to buy clothes in years. The clothes in my room all fall into one of three different categories: (1) they were purchased while I was living in the United States (2005 and earlier), (2) they were gifts, or (3) they were made in China. So, I was very appreciative for the motherly indulgence for what turned into a two-three hour shopping escapade at the incredibly chic Omotesandou Hills. We had to rush home as soon as we finished to drop off the bags because we were meeting Maki-san and Takumi at Shinagawa's Takanawa taxi stand at 8:45 p.m. for an Italian dinner at Davis.

Located in the exclusive Shirogane district, the Italian restaurant would have been impossible to find without the help of a printed map and GPS-equipped taxi (all Japanese taxis have an on-board GPS system, as do most personal vehicles). We made a late reservation, so for the first hour we were seated at an outdoor table where we drank wine and ordered half the appetizers on the menu, ranging from shellfish to carpaccio. Two bottles of wine later, we were sitting inside trying to find room for the main courses for the evening - a hopeless task considering the number one priority for the evening was the wine... We ended up walking, or stumbling, home after dinner on a 20 minute walk back to the house in Gotenyama.

Even back in the safe confines of the house the alcohol continued to flow as Maki-san opened a new bottle of Japanese UMESHU (梅酒, or plum wine), which my mother loved for its sweet taste. I decided to leave Maki-san and her to enjoy the alcohol by themselves while I tried to catch up on the sleep I have missed out on for the past week. (It should go without saying that I will never catch up, but with days as interesting as this why would I ever complain?)