Fireflies in Shibuya

Although I also reserved Thursday morning for recuperating, I was ready to get back to the Tokyo nightlife by late afternoon. I met up with Yuca at the station once she got out of work and we started heading south from the station. Our destination for the evening was the Shibuya Fureai Botanical Centre, as it was the final night that we could view fireflies at that location. Firefly watching is very popular in Japan, albeit in the less urban areas where they are easily found. Since Tokyo is hardly an optimal place for fireflies to live, a small mini-habitat was set up in the botanical garden for the fireflies to mate. No photographs were allowed in the pitch black room, but I doubt my camera would have been able to get a good shot anyways. Having grown up in the Adirondack mountain wilderness, watching (and catching) fireflies wasn't a new experience. However, the fireflies in Japan are a bit different than ones in the northeastern United States. The Japanese fireflies floated around around the room like tiny balls of light, drifting too and fro as if they were fairies. In contrast, the fireflies that I grew up with don't have a constant glow, but instead blip around (making them very hard to catch). On our way out of the building, Yuca expertly explained the features of the fireflies to a group of exchange students who had trouble making sense of the all-Japanese documentary video that had been playing before the exhibit.

With a successful firefly viewing experience under our belts, Yuca and I proceeded northward in search of food. I wasn't particularly picky about dinner, so we eventually settled on a small "hamburg" restaurant. I'm embarrassed to admit that up until writing this post I assumed that a hamburg dish was supposed to be a hamburger sans bun (what an unfortunate bit of American mentality). In reality, it is the Japanese variation of a Salisbury steak dish. Regardless, it was delicious, as can clearly be seen by Yuca's smiling face below: