Yello Everybody,
Greetings again from Tokyo. I had a nice night sleep late morning today I headed to the Australian Embassy to vote in the federal election. The embassy is in the southern end of central tokyo about 5 minutes walk from Azabu Juban subway station, the building is a horrible concrete and steel structure which i'm sure was meant to be modern but just ends up looking ugly(at least to my mind). There were a lot of other people there also for the election(including a young woman who for some reason was carrying around a large inflated kangaroo(half her height)), anyway I voted in a relatively short time and left.
QUICK POLITICAL RANT- I'm not a huge follower of Australian politics, I was when I was younger but i've given up after coming to the realization that both the major parties are pretty much the same and whatever positive things the government does are balanced by the negative things. Take the Liberal party and John Howard, they've done a great job with the economy, however we now have to pay much more money for things like health insurance, university degrees and books(book costs in Australia are outragious, I buy imported English Language books here in Japan for 2/3rds of what I would be paying in Australia and book costs have only gone up to this high in the last 10 years, it's a sad state of affairs which adds to Australia's illiteracy problems). The one thing I truly believe is that no party should be in power to long(especially with majorities in both houses of government), the longer they are in power the more complacent and egotistical they become. On this premise I'm hoping that the Liberals lose power(and the polls seem to support this happening).
After the embassy, since it was only a short walk away I went to the Tokyo Tower(major landmark of Tokyo and of much anime fame(mainly for many animes showing it being destroyed)). The first 4 levels of the tower are shops, small museums(of the tacky king like guiness world records), the 5 level is open and has some small rides for kids. After that the fun starts, to get to the main observation level you have to buy a ticket(costs 820 yen for an adult) and that buys you the privelege to walk up 600 steps, quite small quite steep steps to the observation level. When you get there there are 2 levels for observation, one with a cafe and one with a gift shop. On the 2nd level there was also the entrance for the special observation level(even higher up) but since it was an extra 620 yen and the line was incredibly long and a staff person told me there was more than a hours wait, I decided against it. The view from the main observation level was pretty impressive in anycase. Tokyo tower by the way is the interesting height of 333 meters, and every child in Japan knows this.
Afterwards I headed over to Shibuya where I had dinner and looked around the shops for a while before returning to the hostel. The photo's from today in entirety are on my facebook.
On a sad note one of my many favorite authors, Robert Jordan has died. It must have been relatively recently since I found out from a small sign when I was investigating the english language section of a bookshop. He is best known for his series "The Wheel of Time" which is a huge series numbering 11 massive volumes, he was in the process of writing the 12th(and possibly final) novel, but has died from some sort of rare heart condition. This is a great tragedy and his characters and great ongoing story unfortunately die with him.
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