Full Saturday in Tokyo

by Nathan Crum

What a busy tiring day we have had today, but we have been blessed with tons of good footage. (We will try to post some pictures/videos in the morning) We started our day interviewing the Zirkels this morning around 10am. After the interview we began our 7 hour trek/train ride that was one of our most fun days this week. 

We travelled by train to Yoyogi park where we were able to see what people in Japan like to do on the weekend. Before we got there though we had to get some shots of “The Scramble.” The scramble is a nickname for a large 4-way intersection that has an average of 45,000 people crossing it every hour. The cross walks go from sidewalk to sidewalk and criss-cross into an “x” in the middle of the intersection. You can also just carve your own path and ignore the crosswalks altogether because they stop all four ways of traffic at once instead of a few at a time. On our way to the park we came across a group of Taiko players. Taiko I learned is a Japanese style of drumming where they will choreograph movements between the drums and sort of dance at the same time while playing and switching drums between each other. 

At the park we saw more activities than we could count on two hands. There were people set up doing jump rope to hip-hop music, freestyle basketball & soccer players, skateboarding, BMX bikes, volleyball, Frisbee, sword practice, dancing, picnics, concerts, juggling, and more. You name it we saw it. We stayed there for quite some time trying to film as many youth activities and families in the park as we could. We ran the T2i camera dead and went through 1 ½ batteries on the 5D which we had never done before. I think we managed to gather lots of great shots today. We finally began the journey back home and stopped at a few interesting shops along the way and found some great deals. We also managed to fit our team on our first rush hour train experience just without needing the train attendants to push people to make them fit as the doors were shutting. It was still pretty crowded though. Altogether it was the fullest and most exhausting day but it was one of the best days we have had so far.