Day 3: Ueno Park and Sensoji Temple

First up today was the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park. It was absolutely tipping it down this morning, and even though I had an umbrella I was still pretty soaked by the time we got there. The museum itself had some really cool stuff in, loads of swords, samurai armour and weapons etc. plus lots of big long scrolls, clothing and artwork. Some of the artwork was really nice and we’re gonna try and find some in the malls/markets and bring some back with us.

On our way round Ueno Park a small Japanese man came up to us and chatted with us for (what seemed like) ages about the fact that Americans are paranoid of ‘crazy people’ and ‘terrorists’ etc. and that the British are very ‘expensive’ and ‘difficult’. It was hard figuring out exactly what he was saying, but we just nodded and agreed to most of it, and he didn’t really stop talking enough for us to respond. He was quite a character though, and before he left he pointed us round the corner to the pizza cafe, where we stopped for lunch. Seems like in most restaurants/cafes here its customary to clear your own table into provided bins (usually marked out for plastic/paper etc). After lunch we went around a few other small shrines in the park, then headed on the metro towards Tokyo’s oldest temple, Sensoji.

Walking towards the temple you go through a long street full of shops geared for tourists, all selling mostly a load of crap, but occasionally we saw some nice Japanese canvas/material paintings. We might get one of those when we come back to Tokyo at the end of our holiday.

Reaching the Temple I couldn’t believe how massive it was, especially the 5-storey pagoda. That was particularly cool… It reminded me of all the old Karate/Ninja/Kung Fu fighting games I used to play on the C64 years ago. Very picturesque. We spent a good hour here looking at the shrines and temples, and walking around the temple’s gardens. Then we went out of the temple’s grounds and popped in a Starbucks for a Frappucino before heading out to the Akihabara district, where there’s loads of discount electronic stores. Stopped there and went into a massive department store called Yodobashi Akiba. Soooo much stuff in there.. PCs, Macs, all game consoles, basically anything electronic. There was a big Wii section there, and saw quite a few games that aren’t out yet in the UK. Seems the Wii has taken off here much more than in the UK.

Went out to Roppongi Hills in the evening to try and find somewhere nice to eat. Man that place is ponsy! Its very posh… maybe we went in the wrong area, but it seemed quite deserted at around 8pm and all the shops/restaurants in the main plaza were really hard to find… sort of connected by these large windy corridors with the odd shop placed here and there. Very strange. Anyway after about 20 mins we found a Tapas restaurant with an English menu, so we sat down and ordered some food. There was only 3 or so things on the entire menu that didn’t have seafood in the title, so we went for those…. except the ‘Chicken Satay with Indonesian Rice’ had bloody prawns in it didn’t it, so I ended up with just chicken skewers in sweet chili sauce, and some chinese pork dumplings. Got an ice-cream on the way back to cheer myself up.

Well another nice but tiring day, our legs ache like crazy! Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow. Haven’t decided what we’re gonna do tomorrow yet, as we’re just about to plan it… so stay tuned!

Just uploaded pics from today!