From Sailor Moon Flash!
Contents |
Chuo Gakuen
An above-average public high school. Most senshi-age characters will attend here, and are required to wear the uniform. No, boys, you do not have to wear the skirt. Put on pants, for heaven's sake.
Tokyo Dome
The enormous stadium arena where all large-scale acts play. If you've ever seen footage of a concert in Tokyo, this is probably where it was performed. It also contains a hotel and a casino, and i something of a tiny little island of Vegas-lite.
Asakusa
The red-light tourist trap. Asakusa even has gangs, though they're styled mostly after the cast of West Side Story; vinyl pant-clad young men have been known to move in formation and pose for photographs. There are lots and lots and lots of very very loud motorcycle gangs here -- meaning high school kids on Yamahas, not Hell's Angels.
Sensoji
Tokyo's oldest temple. Founded in the seventh century, Sensoji is dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and is therefore popularly called the Asakusa Kannon Temple. According to legend, the temple was founded after two fishermen pulled up a golden statue of Kannon from the sea. The sacred statue is still housed in the temple, carefully preserved inside three boxes, and even though it's never on display and the public has never seen it, people still flock to the temple to pay their respects.
Imperial Palace
Built on the spot where the Edo Castle stood during the days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the palace was completed in 1888 after the imperial family moved from Kyoto to Tokyo. The present palace, however, isn't the original -- that was destroyed, along with almost everything else in the city, during air raids in 1945. Its grounds are only open to the public two days a year: New Year's Day and the Emperor's birthday, December 23. Ueno Park
Formerly the preceincts of Kaneiji Temple, Ueno Park was opened in 1873 as Tokyo's first public park. It contains Ueno Zoo, which opened in 1882 and while it seems rather small by today's proportions, it's one of the best known in Japan partly because of the two giant pandas donated by the Chinese government. The Zoo also contains the famous Shinobazu pond, which is a bird sanctuary and filled with lotus plants that bloom every August.
Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan
Japan's largest museum and the crowning jewel of Ueno Park. It has the largest collection of Japanese art in the world and is the place to go to see antiques from Japan's past and history, including lacquerware, pottery, scrolls, screens, ukiyo-e, samurai armor, swords, kimonos, and much more.
