Banpaku Park & the Flea Market

I'd heard about a flea market that was going to happen this weekend, and in an effort to secure some interesting things and/or souvenirs, tried to pin down the date/time/location. I found out that Lindzi had a flyer for it and decided to tag along. We (L, K and myself - Meaghan slept through everything, heh) left the dorms about noonish and headed to Banpaku Park. We met another Aussie girl named Rachel at the train station and she accompanied us. The park itself was the site of the 1970 world's fair and features a giant statue called Taiyō no Tō (The Statue of the Sun). The statue itself is really large and so highly visible from the road and the train. I'd seen the statue before as the train rumbled towards Suita campus, and had wondered what the hell it was, exactly. Here's a distance shot of Taiyō no Tō, who from this point on I'm affectionately calling Tato:

Tato is pretty strange. He reminds me of a creature out of a Miyazaki film. According to Wikipedia, Tato has three faces:

"...two faces on the front, and a face in the back. The face located at the top, whose diameter is 11 metres, represents the future. The face between two arms represents the present, and a black face on the rear of the tower is the sun of the past. The jagged red paintings on the front of the tower represent thunder."

To me, Tato is a little intimidating. He watches over the fairgrounds with all-seeing, all-encompassing eyes from his three faces. He greets you upon entry and his watchful eye is upon you until long after you exit the compound. Also, he's really quite huge. Here's some additional pictures:

Tato greeting us as we entered the park:

Kathryne standing in front of Tato, for scale:

Full-body shot:

A close-up of the face representing now:

The face on the back of Tato, representing the past:

But enough about Tato, he's not why we were at the park. We were there for the "giant" flea market! Now, it was a decently sized market, to be sure, but it's not really "giant" compared to the kinds of never-ending flea markets back in Texas. Most of the "stalls" (they weren't really stalls but generally things laid out on tarps or blankets) sold clothing, shoes and/or accessories, but there was some strange and interesting stuff, too. I did take a pic of the flea market:

Tato, keeping a close watch to make sure no one steals anything:

These guys were selling some interesting stuff, including a really old record player that was only ￥4,000:

There was also a guy doing some simple paintings and calligraphy for money, and I had him draw something up for me. I should have gotten more things done because he was pretty good, and it's a neat thing to have something that was made specifically for you, you know? There is one thing that absolutely haunts me, though. There was a beautiful, perfect, steam-punk style pocket watch. It was polished silver and had a small round window in part of the watch where you could see the gears going. It had etchings on the outside and it was just positively perfect. It was also ￥12,000 (about $150 USD) so I had to leave it behind, but damn I wish I could have bought that pocket watch, even if I'd never really wear it or anything. It was so cool.

I didn't buy much, really, just a few odds-and-ends. The girls bought some things (mostly clothes), and Rachel bought a fish bowl. It was pretty interesting to stroll the fairgrounds. There's not much else I can say about the flea market. It was a flea market; use your imagination. Although, I did take a picture of this sleeping bag that was for sale (for Andrew):

After we'd seen all we wanted to see, we decided to get some lunch at an Italian restaurant that Lindzi and Kathryne had discovered. Apparently you can get some kind of five-course meal for a measly ￥1,100 (about $13.50 USD). The place is called Saizeriya and it's located in one of the nearby train stations. Actually there are several locations because it's a chain. I took some pictures of the menu. The entire menu, heh. Like I've said, it's not the really obvious differences between cultures that is interesting, in my opinion it's the things we have in common but tweak to our own cultures that's interesting! You can download my photos of their menu as a .rar file here, if you're interested. That being said, I took some close-ups of things of interest... They serve escargot:

And some sort of pasta in a black sauce (the pasta itself isn't black, but the sauce is... I have no idea - I've been informed this is squid ink sauce):

In the end, I had neither the black pasta nor the escargot (though the escargot was tempting as all hell - being serious here, snails are delicious [sorry, Jes!]) and opted for a white-sauce pasta with spinach and bacon. I ordered the set, which came with a soup (clam chowder) and a salad. I also ordered some cheese bread and then for desert I had "tiramisu." I put tiramisu in quotes because it's not really tiramisu. It's more like tiramisu in ice-cream-cake form. Tasted great, though, so no complaints. Yum:

All in all, it was a pretty good day. I think we are going to hit up the flea market again in the future because it's a good way to spend a day. I have a couple more blogs that I need to post, namely about Den Den Town as well as Inari Shrine, so, as they say in Japan, LOOK FORWARD TO IT!