We breakfasted at a Denny's. I had a
salad and pancakes, which, as it turns out, makes a wonderful
breakfast. Afterwards, on the advice of the tourism office, we went
to Ueno to see the museums. We visited the Tokyo National Museum,
where we saw silk paintings, samurai costumes, and some photographs
from 100 years ago. We walked through the park in search of the
statue of the samurai with his dog, which we eventually found. The
samurai publicly disemboweled himself in protest of the Meiji
government, but we were more interested in his dog. We had lunch at
a vending machine restaurant. Afterwards, Bobby discovered a grape
mountain dew in another vending machine. We headed for the imperial
palace, where we found out that the subway machines ate our tickets
if we transferred to another company's line. A woman in the ticket
booth helped us get them back.
The imperial palace gardens were
nondescript, though the huge walls that surrounded them were
interesting. Bobby liked the koi ponds. I was upset to discover
that my new maneki neko camera case had fallen out of my bag
somewhere. We stopped by the 7-11 for a red bean ice cream to ease
the loss. There were several people standing around reading the manga on the shelves. I wondered why the shopkeeper didn't tell them to buy something or leave.
That night, we went to Akibahara, which
was not far from our hotel. I had been pestering Bobby to read the
guidebook and pick a place in Tokyo where he wanted to go, and he
selected Akibahara, which is Tokyo's nerd central. Besides being a
center for buying discount electronics, it had a lot of anime and
game shops. It turned out to be one of my favorite spots in Tokyo,
with lots of people in costume. We explored a six story Sega
building, where Bobby won me a new camera case from one of the claw
cranes. The building had two stories full of claw cranes, and the
other four were various types of video games. I wanted to get a
picture, but there were no photo signs plastered everywhere. We went
to a mazelike restaurant for dinner which was full of private
room/booths. We were dismayed to discover that we were supposed to
order food from a computer screen in Japanese, but an English
speaking waiter helped us.
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| a shrine in Ueno park |
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| The samurai and his dog |
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| Imperial palace gardens |
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| Akibahara |
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| How do we order from this thing? |
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