NICK: Ueno Park: Conquered
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2006
1
9
106
Trip End
Ongoing
Tokyo,
Japan
Saturday, February 11, 2006
it was a difficult journey, having conquered two train lines and mastered a subway line, but adversity is no stranger to the likes of us. We battled thru treacherous crowds, horrific timetables, and the ever indecipherable Kanji/Chinese characters on the train schedule.
Ok, so it wasn't that hard, but I didn't want to bore you with: we got on two trains and rode the subway to Ueno park.
Big friggin whup tee doo.
Anyways, this park is massive
01 Ash looking at the Hiroshima exhibit
. Supposedly it's the first western style park (I don't know what an eastern style park is like) that was created in Japan. It's really impressive in size, but their museums are amazing. There's a zoo, 3 museums, miles of walking, a shrine, a bunch of statues, a city of homeless people, and after dark, finally, some skateboarders. This park has it all. We pretty much just walked around there all day. One thing that stood out was when we got some okinamiyaki (okay mom, you win, I like okinamiyaki now), this kind of odd homeless guy (we think) walked up to us whilst we dined upon such delectable delights, and said: I don't eat around here, all these places are run by the mafia. Part of your money goes to the mafia.
That was really random. Not only did he speak pretty good english, but he comes to warn us about the mafia (Yakuza, in japanese). Odd, I keep hearing about the yakuza, but I'd believe that they're pretty underground.. who knows, they might be everywhere and I'd never even know it.
Whatever.
I've never really worried about crime, and I'll start when I run into it
02 Nick at his gayest
. There's no point.The homeless village was a bunch of tents, all with their shoes neatly lined up outside their tents. Civility, even in uncivil times... you gotta love the japanese.
Ash and I went around the Japanese National Museum in Ueno Park. It was REALLY BIG.. I'd read the pamphlet incorrectly and had thought that the museum was going to be open until 8pm, but I'd failed to note that it was open til 8 during the summertime and only 5 during the winter. We got to the museum around 3, and failed to see all 7 floors of the museum. We dashed around the 2nd floor to see what we could until the security started closing the doors behind us and pushing us towards the exit.
That's another one we'll need to return to.
Check out the pics, some of them came out.
It was interesting that they let us take pictures inside the museum.. the only pieces that we couldn't take pictures of were those whose purpose was strictly religious
03 Homeless guy feeding the birds
. Those articles consisted of Japanese carved buddhas, ceremonial bowls, plates, writings, etc. For some reason, those were also the least fantastic things in the museum. I've seen better in temples.. Another thing that we saw was a collection of Japanese calligraphy at another museum. There was a huge amount of posters, all about the same size, of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. They were all pretty fancy and impressive. The ones that Ash and I decided we liked the most and that stood out to us were the ones that made neat little boxes. Other than that, it was hundreds of fancy words that we couldn't read.
Cya.
Comments
It's OKONOMIYAKI.
The ones served in Japan are very tasty.
Re: It's OKONOMIYAKI.
oops. I still haven't had takoyaki yet. I saw someone making some, but we missed our opportunity.