Andre and Wendy

Another fun day today. On our agenda was to find a plum tree in bloom, success when we walked around Ueno Park first thing this morning. It was a beautiful morning, though still really chilly. Started out around 5 degrees and didn't feel like it warmed up much with some wind all day. The park borders the zoo, which I had originally planned to go and visit as they had 2 pandas. Unfortunately China took them back in January, because of some disagreement between Tokyo and Beijing and the possibility of Japan getting involved with any conflict between China and Taiwan. I think it was $8 Canadian for 2 of us, not sure how much there is in the zoo.

We walked around the perimeter of the park, along with the plum trees we also saw a few cherry trees in bloom. Some ducks out enjoying the lake, but we are too early to rent the swan pedal boats, so sorry about that. I am sure they were busy this afternoon with the small crafts out on the water. We stopped at the information center in the park to get a stamp to add to my bag of the places we had visited. I thought the bag was a good idea since I didn't think I would ever look at a book of stamps again, but it has been a bit of a bust as the ink does not show very well on my bag, oh well it is fun finding the stamps all over the city. The fun thing about his stop for the stamp is a woman came out from behind the counter to speak to us, and she spoke very good English. Turns out she worked at Queen Elizabeth School in Moncton years ago. So far we have not spoken to anyone that knows Canada exists further east than Montreal or Toronto, so when we told her we were from NB and she knew where that was, then said Moncton we were really surprised.

After our walk around Ueno park we took the subway to Asakusa for a view from the 8th floor in the information building. Lots and lots of people out and about. Many many little shops selling things, I bought a set of 5 chopsticks for us to use. We have purchased different food for taking back to our hotel room but don't have any cutlery, we now have chopsticks. Lots of people going in and out of the little stores, a little congested for me. We did purchase some yaki dango mitarashi to try, it was OK, but not what I would call a real treat that I would look for again. It is interesting as it is a bit of an unwritten rule (well we have seen signs saying this on some streets) that you do not eat or drink while walking. So each of this tiny little vendors on this street that sell food need to set up a spot where people can eat their purchases.

At the end of this pedestrian street we visited the shrine. When we reached the shrine we realized that we were here the first night we arrived, with about 15 other people. Today there are hundreds and hundreds of people out. Had a great lunch of some tradition Japanese food that was cooked on the grill in front of us, Monja and Okonomiyaki, we really enjoyed both. Every table in this type of restaurant has a grill built right into the table. It is quite a production for them to make the meals. We had to be told how to eat each of them. For the monja you are given a little tiny spatula type tool that you scrape up and eat on. For the Okonomiyaki we had no idea how to pick up the pancake thing with chopsticks, but our server/cook came and explained what to do using google translate. Here in Tokyo nearly everyone we have spoken to speaks at least some basic English, way better than the 10 words we know in Japanese.

We also stopped at 2 places that sell cooking knives. Thinking of buying one for a souvenir but good ones are not cheap. Will see when we get back to Tokyo.

Back to our apartment for a rest then off to Shinjuku to figure out tickets to our next stop on our adventures in Japan. We will be 2 nights at our next stop and we had read about a pass that includes all transportation around where we are staying. Transportation means boat rides, bus rides, train rides and cable cars. That sorted and we think we know what we are doing around that, we shall see.

Since we are so close we revisited Godzilla and the 3D Cat again in the dark. The cat shows up on the screen doing something every 15 minutes, I could stay quite a while just to see what it is going to do.

Next we took the subway back to The Electric Village in Akihabara. Again we have been here before in the daylight, but much more to see at night. So many people out on the street, and many many maid girls out trying to entice you into their establishments. Walked back to the hotel to get ready as we head out and start travelling through Japan early tomorrow morning.

24973 steps / 15.2 kms