More culture than you can shake a stick at!

As always, pics at the bottom of the post.

Day three we were up bright and early...relatively speaking. We were out the door by about 10AM. By now, I was pretty confident about navigating the Tokyo Metro system, so we made our way down to Tokyo Tower. We did the whole tour, up to the Observation Platforms 1 and 2, and I snapped the requisite pics. Honestly, it was more of a tourist thing, de rigeur as a "tourist". Though the grandparents with all their grandkids in tow made the appropriate oohs and ahhs, Tokyo Tower, a copy of the Eiffel Tower, has nothing on good ol' CN. Still, I got an appreciative chuckle from my elevator mates when the elevator cable went ka-thunk. It's completely normal, or so the helpful recording told us. Oddly enough, when I cried out in mock dismay, "Oh no, we're all gonna die!", it was in English. I guess that "Oh shit!" moment is universal regardless of language.

While at the tower, I had been playing email tag with my cousin. Thanks to an early-ending workday, she volunteered to be a tour-guide for the rest of the day. Noon-time was fast approaching, but we had both decided the day before to head back to Akihabara to search for that mysterious souvenier which would represent our time there. In retrospect, we should have checked out another district of Tokyo. Oh well. There's comfort for me in the familiar, and we were getting pretty cozy with the district.

We lunched at Go Go Curry. Despite the name, the mascot featured a gorilla. Go Go Curry caters to rushed Tokyo salarymen-types, but for the 750 yen I paid, I got a helluva good chicken-cutlet curry. The food-ticket vending machine however said it was econo-sized, so I'm scared to see what a jumbo-size looked like. It's odd, because I remember laughing when Ian told me that his friends had egged him on about how little he would eat here in Japan. If that was true, I'd be a twig by now.

We had about an hour and a half in Akihabara, where I managed to find one of the things I had come to Tokyo to find: a spare mag for my Marushin 1911 TRP. Ian managed to fill out some more of his list of things to find, but soon it was time to meet up with my cousin.

We headed out to Ryogoku Station. There, even from the platform, we were able to spy the gigantic Tokyo Edo Museum. Linking up with my cousin, we toured the museum. Though I had been skeptical about it, the museum was a lot of fun, and it was here that I would take the bulk of my pictures. I think it must have been all the interactive displays, as well as the overall environment, a welcome cry from the more sterile, and hence boring, Kyushu National Museum. We were there for a couple of hours, and in the end we visited the souvenier shop, where I got my omiyage (souveniers I am essentially required by Japanese custom to buy for the staff at school), as well as 3 prints which I would turn into a pseudo-triptych now adorning my wall at home.

With the sun starting its decline, the museum closing up, and us all sort of shopped out, what were we to do? My cousin suggested Ueno Park, to sit amongst the cherry trees, watching the blossoms and drinking some sake. It sounded wonderful to us, so off we went.

Ueno Park was a sort of urban oasis. The cherry blossoms, which down in Fukuoka were only starting to bloom thanks to the messed up weather we've been having (normally, they follow the jetstream and bloom south to north in orderly progression), covered nearly every tree. As the sun began to set the red lanterns came on, and we sat in a rosey-orange sea of cherry-viewing parties, with cups of heated sake to warm our hands.

It was soon dark, and despite this, the park was getting more crowded. We decided to duck out and find a place to eat. The last things on our itinerary were some sort of traditional Japanese dinner, then some karaoke. Having no real idea what that traditional dinner would be, we started to walk through the famous Ameyayakocho Market. I was delighted to find a donair vendor, the closest I think I may come to in Japan for Mediterranean food. Yet we were unable to think of anything to eat otherwise. Leaving the Market, we came out to one of the main roads, where we spied an okonomiyaki restaurant. OK, so it wasn't authentic Tokyo cuisine, but it was Japanese. We were treated to what was honestly a mediochre dining experience, and it wasn't until we were at the karaoke pub that we realized we should have just grabbed food there.

Oh well, on to singing. Karaoke was a mixed bag, mostly because our tastes in music varied so much. My cousin and I were a little closer matched, but she knows songs more popular in recent years, which I am only just beginning to discover. Ian on the other hand seemed to prefer oldies and classic rock, which I have little knowledge of. I stuck to my usual repertoire, so in the end we were just singing our own tunes.

It was a sort of a melancholy way to end the evening, but in the balance it was oddly fitting. Tomorrow we would be leaving busy Tokyo, so for now, it was time to get back to the hotel.

Pics here.