400-Year-Old Flea Market and 250,000 LED Xmas Lights

Wednesday, Nov 16

The Professor and I took another old-timey tram type train out to the Setagaya station to the two-day 400-year-old Boroichi (Rag) Market. It’s their version of a flea market that also includes food vendors. I envisioned finding all kinds of old Asian treasures and I dragged The Professor out there to help me carry them home.

What did we find? The Professor found two records and an antiquish beer opener. I found only tasty vendor snacks. There’s a reason I’m putting on weight—I can’t stop eating all the freshly made food at these dang things.

After trying some freshly grilled chicken, a couple of my favorite mystery cans of booze, squid balls on a stick, and a hot scallion-filled pancake we waddled off back to the train, heading back to our next destination.

Taking a different line back we got off at the Shimbashi station to see the light displays of Shiodome—listed as one of the better Xmas light displays in the city. From the photos we’d seen of it, we expected it to be a huge production and easy to spot. Imagine our surprise when we exited only to find that we had to wander all over the area to find it? How can one hide 250,000 LED lights? Apparently, it was easy and it took us wandering all over and around the neighboring tall buildings in all directions for twenty minutes to finally find it—where it was quite well hidden in a courtyard inside the Caretta Shiodome Shopping Center.  

This year’s theme is called Canyon d’Azur and goes until Feb 14^th. The display features a light show every 20 minutes starting at 5pm and going until 11pm that features some puffs of smoke blown in your face, some fake snow blown in your face, and lights going on and off and changing colors to music. It was tacky and fun, though much smaller than I expected. But who doesn’t like bright colors and flashing lights? I know I do.

We finished off the evening with dinner at a Hawaiian restaurant inside the building that offered only pancakes, waffles or three choices of toppings over rice.

What a country.