Japan: Day One, Ueno Park

a_lazy_legend already did her take on this attraction but I was in the neighborhood and decided to stop by despite her unfavorable account. I came to the neighborhood to activate my JR pass but like a complete idiot I forgot to bring along my passport so that had to be postponed.

The park was a bit scary. It's overrun by a huge number of homeless people, who made quite a home out of it. You can see small huts all over the place, complete with clothes lines and other features of human habitation. Along with hordes of homeless the park is teaming with cats, who look a lot cleaner and better taken care of than humans. So visitors admire and pamper ubiquitous cats and studiously ignore fellow human beings.

I also didn't make it into any museums because it was getting a bit late and I didn't want to get stuck in the area after dark, but I did stop by the courtyard of one of them to capture some sculptures of owls.

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Complete album:
Ueno Park

Dinner

Yesterday Lena decided to pick a place for dinner out of the guide. The place she chose supposedly had an English menu but didn't have an English sign outside. Since Tokyo can boast one of the most bizzare building numbering schemes, we did not want to trust our dinner chances just to the address, so Lena copied down the Japanese sign to the best of her calligraphic abilities and we went searching. There we were, walking down the street, Lena busy carefully inspecting all the signs, me just trailing along. At this one spot she decided to ask for my advice, which I readily offered saying that to me it looks just right (those wiggles all look the same to me, to be quite frank). Wrong answer, apparently, because I was told I was crazy and then dragged on farther. Two blocks later, when we finally started paying attention to the numbers, we figured out that we must have missed our destination and after some hesitation decided to turn back. Well, after realizing that it indeed was possible to follow blocks 3-9 and 3-8 with a 3-4, we located the restaurant easily enough. You probably have guessed by now, it was the exact same spot I mentioned earlier and had Lena listened to me it would have saved us some fruitless wondering around. As it was, I got something to gloat about for the rest of the evening. Food, btw, was terrible, by the end of dinner I was wishing we never found the place.

Japan: Day Two, Meiji Shrine

Meiji Jingu Shrine is not very old, it only dates from 1920s, and is dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, the one who gave the name to the Meiji Restoration and holds responsibility for abolishion of Shogunate and opening of Japan to the outside world, and his wife. Despite its relatively young age it's one of the most venerated shrines in Japan. It's also one of the simplest of the major shrines, built of cypress wood with very few adornments.

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Complete album:
Meiji Shrine