Day 8

On Day 9 I traveled to Tokyo's one and only advertisement museum. When we arrived we were greeted by our tour guide, Yuko. Yuko started our tour by asking a few questions about advertisements. In her PowerPoint presentation we were guided to find Pepsi symbols within larger pictures. This was part of a campaign led by the Pepsi company to show that Pepsi can be found within the bigger picture. The tour started with an explanation that advertising was created in Japan, which is a fact that I was not aware of. Advertising was introduced in Japan during the Edo period. The invention of woodblock prints, nishiki-e created a means for fast spread advertisements. One of the first seen ads was a nishiki-e of three women adorned in kimonos in front a Kimono store. Nishiki-e were given outas a form of fashion magazines during this time. Later in this time period businesses started to hang signage outside their storefronts in order to show customers what their store offers. Yuko guided us around the museum which shows ads all throughout history, even in the U.S. We saw a specific exhibit which displays different products, such as phones, from different eras. In the end we were guided to use a sticky note and write an answer to the question "what is an ad to you?" then post it on the wall. In the end we were allowed to travel around the different parts of the museum in order to make our own nishiki-e post cards with a kabuki character design. I also noticed that in the building there was an Aladdin play taking place. After the museum, we were taken to the top of the building to look at a beautiful view of the city. In my opinion Shibuya sky was better since the view was at night, nonetheless the view was great! Later this day we visited the grocery store near the hostel called Hamasa Plus. I grabbed a snack thinking it was regular cheeseballs, turns out they are sweet instead of savory.