Japan Day 2: Edo-Tokyo Museum and Sumo

   The Edo-Tokyo museum was our first stop of the day. It was interesting but a bit disappointing, there weren't many artifacts though there were several scale models of towns and such. As a seasoned museum goer I had expected it to be a bit bigger, though what was there was well laid out. A friend of mine is attending grad school for museum studies and I've helped her with a few projects so I know the design would be considered exemplary. 

   The model villages were interesting even though (and maybe especially since) I had seen similar ones in my history textbooks. There were a few large buildings that dominated the space.

   The best exhibit in my opinion was of a wartime household, the children's toys on the floor humanize it a lot and remind me strongly of a picture in one of my childhood  books of  family portrait taken in a similar stetting in America around the time period being represented.

   After that we went to the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament (one of the many days of it). I liked it a lot more than I thought I would because there was this great crowd atmosphere that you wouldn't get from watching it on television or the internet.   The first few still dragged a bit, especially with the seemingly endless posturing before that  actual matches began but as we got up to the more important matches even that part got more and more exciting.

   As someone interested in marketing it was cool to see how they'd managed to bring in advertisements in the form of traditional products on cloth banners as sponsors of different rounds. If I ever go to Japan again with someone who has never seen sumo, I'd take them but I wouldn't go again by myself.