Quadrophonic sermonizing

Thanks to Kate's intervention, we actually left the Xmas party festivities in time to return home at a reasonable hour. I became rather thankful of this the following morning, upon seeing some of my fellow workers who had a) drunk way more than I had and b) not returned home until well after midnight.

Christmas season in Tokyo is, I gather, prime time for proselytizing. I thought my encounter with Santas for Jesus was pretty damn cool, but that was nothing compared to the ambitious presentation outside Shibuya station a couple of days ago. At each of the four corners of one of my favorite intersections in the world was positioned a determined man or woman holding up a 10-foot pole. Besides signs displaying the usual messages ("Christ is our saviour", etc.), each of the poles supported a set of loudspeakers. Blaring from these loudspeakers, in perfect unison (they were receiving a transmission from a nearby van), was an impassioned sermon--and based on the snippets I caught of (to translate roughly) "We're all awful sinners" and "Jesus is coming Real Soon Now", I gather it was One Of Those Churches.

Given that this location is in the very heartland of godless commercialism, I doubt they won any converts. Still, they get an A+ for effort.

Today we made our first visit to the Shibuya library. The Central Branch contains (apparently) 7000 foreign language books, and of course English is fairly well represented. I picked up Atwood's Blind Assassin, a volume of Nietzsche in English translation (whoever's in charge of the philosophy section seems to like Nietzsche), and a book on Japanese grammar. Kate got a couple of SF books. And all at a reasonable price, that being free.

We'd planned to visit the Christon Cafe (which features an enormous statue of the Devil looming over the main room), but aborted the operation due to overcrowding, and perhaps a touch of swankiness angst. Maybe another time.

In the interim, we've got a Christmas turkey dinner scheduled for tomorrow, thanks to one of my coworkers, The President's Assistant. And plans have been made to spend New Years with the rellies, following an excursion down the island to visit Chris and Apis. Sweet as.