Day Fourteen (!) - Ueno, the pandaless wonder :<

Hello. ^_^

I really enjoyed my trek across Kyushu, but I have to say, I'm pretty glad to be back in bright and busy Tokyo after all of that.

Today I went to Ueno, which is mostly a park, with many museums and some shrines both in and around it. Also, there's a zoo! BUT. Oh, that damn zoo.

Mrs. Black came with me at the start of my day... I slept in to make up for the previous night so we got going around 1 or so. We were going to go to Ueno Zoo to see... PANDAS. YES. I heard the zoo wasn't that good except for the fact that it had pandas, and that was worth $5 to me. :< But when we got to the zoo... no pandas! There was a sign saying that there has been no panda exhibit as of April 2008, when... the panda... died. ._____.;;;; It died! There's no more panda! Needless to say, we were sad and disappointed, because we really wanted to see a panda. But at least we didn't pay admission first.

Instead we went to a nearby shrine, which is unusual in that your admission fee lets you actually go inside and view artifacts and get an up-close look at the relief carvings, lauquer, and gold leaf that make up the structures. We took off our shoes and went inside. There were some cool things on display, including a very old map of Japan done in metal. You weren't supposed to take photos inside but I snuck in a few covertly... the negative side to doing that is that framing and focus of the shots is sort of a mixed bag. The rest of the grounds were nice, and included a hundred or so very VERY big stone lanterns, as well as, unusually, about 50 copper lanterns. This is one of the main attractions. I certainly is the only shrine I went to where I saw copper lanterns, and they were huge like the stone ones! They were really pretty. A sign said they aren't used for regular lighting, but only when lighting fires for rituals, etc, or something to that effect.

Afterwards, Mrs. Black left to take care of some things... it was her daughter's birthday today. :< I continued on through the park, deciding to choose one of the many museums to go to. I chose the biggest one, the Tokyo National Museum, which is supposed to be very good. While looking at the Ueno Park map, a Japanese man approached me and asked if he could talk to me, as he was practicing his English. I said yes, and so he asked me several questions about where I was going, if I was in Japan on vacation, etc. He was surprised to hear that I like the craziness of Shibuya :< He offered to come to the museum with me to continue the conversation, as he is a member there, but I declined.

I went to the museum by myself and it was very large, consisting of four separate buildings. I only made it to one building, and part of it was a whirlwind tour, at that, since I was running out of time before they closed. ._. I did get to see a lot of cool things, though, including their current exhibit of awesome statues and other artifacts from a temple in Kyoto that is being renovated, which is the only reason they allowed the items to leave the grounds. The statues of Buddha and related figures that they had were awesome. Most of them had inlaid crystal eyes, which I have never seen before. It made them look almost alive. No photos allowed in that room, of course :<

After I sort of ran around seeing as many rooms as I could before closing, I left to go take a look at the big pond of the park, with a shrine in the middle. The pond is sort of divided by paths into three sections. One is open for renting little boats, and the rest is entirely covered in enormous lotus leaves. Huge! Without the flowers, so many lotus plants with the giant leaves and the pods were almost gross :< I was torn about how interesting versus icky I found them. However, there was some nice animal life... really big fish, lots of turtles ^_^ , and some ducks. The shrine itself was not terribly interesting, though it's sort of hard to describe why, so I'll leave it at that.

I spent the rest of the evening at a shopping arcade near the park, which consisted basically of three parallel streets (plus some cross streets) of stalls and shops. Lots of fish and some fruits, veggies, and mushrooms for sale. The stores were mostly clothing or cosmetic stores offering discounted merchandise. Some were more regular clothing stores. There were also a lot of pachinko/slot places mixed in, heh. One street had a bunch of capsule hotels (I'm dying to try one of those >_>) and other facilities to appeal to the male on his own for the evening. All in all it was a nice area to spend the time as it got dark, since it was full of people and energy. One of the fruit vendors was selling skewers with a big slice of fresh fruit on it for ¥100. I got a nice slice of pineapple ^_^ it was yummy.

Afterwards I went back to Shibuya seeking food, where I went to a really nice restaurant-sized cafe and had pasta with sauce. I like that you can usually get some kind of a set of food at most restaurants, or you order something and it ends up being a set. I guess since more traditional Japanese meals consist of several components, that often translates into other kinds of eating establisments. At the very least, you often get a "mini salad," which can be any number of things, but ever since Fukuoka, I always try the little salad. At the museum in Fukuoka, there was a tiny mound of salad consisting of shredded cabbage or lettuce and shredded carrot, with some sort of peanuty dressing... really good. I've received the tiny salad at a few other places, and it always has some kind of great dressing, so I always eat it. My pasta set tonight came with a little bowl of chips and a little bowl of salad (really little... a 3-or-so-inch dia. ramekin) and the pasta, which was really good.

I finished off the day with a strawberry parfait at the Blue Seal Cafe, which is now my favourite place to get ice cream. ^_^ They even have flavours from Okinawa, and there's good people watching from the second floor eating area.

So, tentative plan for the last week of my trip:

Thurs - Roppongi and/or Odaiba(?), cos it's raining.
Fri - Day trip to Nikko
Sat - Sumo day! With dinner and/or shopping afterwards.
Sun - Harajuku, for another attempt at seeing some Harajuku girls, plus shopping and the Meiji Shrine.
Mon - Day trip to Kamakura with Mrs. Black
Tues - Stuido Ghibli Museum!
Wed - Shopping in Shinjuku (and picking up some melon pan :<), probably packing.
Thurs - Packing, then going home ._.

Man, I've been so tired... I'm falling asleep here >_> oh well. Here I go!
(actually, I did fall asleep writing this, which was probably obvious. But now I fixed it! ^_^;)