We spent some time with the concierge to determine the best route to our museum stops today.  We started at the Suntory Museum, which is on the third floor of Tokyo Midtown Tower in Roppongi, a gigantic high-end shopping mall.  We could have spent all day in the mall, but we had other museums to see.  The Suntory exhibit was called “information or inspiration” and was an interesting way to present art.  There were two paths through the exhibit.  The “information” path showed you a piece of art and had plaques describing how the art was created and its history.  So we saw thirty pieces of art.  Then we took another “inspiration” path through the same objects, but each piece was highlighted in an artistic way to inspire an emotion, but contained no information about the object.  It was an interesting technique.

We then went to the National Museum of Modern Art, which has just completed a renovation in March.  The first special exhibit was “Laugh Off This Hopeless World: Ichiro.  I wasn’t a fan of his art, which you’ll see in the photos below.  There was another exhibit in the MOMAT section of the museum that was very interesting and had some of their standard collection.  Photos are below.

We then headed to see the Sumo Museum only to find out that the museum was only open to those holding tickets to the day’s sumo matches.  The seats are all sold out, so we couldn’t see the museum.  To get tickets to any of the next matches, you have to arrive at 5 am and they start selling 400 tickets to the day’s matches at 7:45 am.  We didn’t want to see the museum that badly.  We got a few shots of the flags and sumo wrestlers, and Tom had lunch at a chanko nabe restaurant.  Chanko is the vegetable stew that the wrestlers eat in order to stay strong and add weight.  I whipped next door for some McDonald’s French fries for our ride home to watch sumo.

Tonight’s dinner was another sushi restaurant, Utamai.  Tom enjoyed his sushi and I had tempura.

Cheryl

Here are photos from breakfast and the Suntory Museum:

Here are photos from the Museum of Modern Art.  The umbrella photos are from an area where you’re given an umbrella and you walk on a white strip that shows moving figures, such as drops in a pool, only where the light shines on the umbrella.

And here are photos from the afternoon and evening:

Chanka nabe