Uppercut!

Today was a very nice day, with a bright yellow sun, and for the first time some blue sky. We started off on a late day to allow Melissa's foot a little while to rest, as it was to be a long day of walking through Ueno Park - Tokyo's largest park.

The goal was to try and view the park's cherry blossom trees, it's semi-large zoo and the very large Museum of Natural history. Of these three we managed to complete one and a half.

The museum was instantly out of the question due to the fact that they are closed every Monday. With all the planning that I did beforehand we finally came across something unexpected - oh well, we'll just see it later on.

The cherry blossoms were not in full effect yet, which I could have figured out if only I paid more attention to the weather reports. You see, the weather girl each morning lets you know: A) What type of weather you are going to have. B) How hot and cold it will be. C) What percentage of cherry blossoms have bloomed. It's a weird thing to show at that time but people seem to take them pretty serious.

Although the blossoms weren't in full effect there were still a lot of great things we were able to see and do.

First off there were lots of temples and shrines in the park. Some of them had gongs you could ring, and incense you could burn. Others had room for you to tie on a prayer. All of them though had a place to wash your hands, rinse out your mouth, and toss a coin in for a prayer.

All the buildings were several hundred years old and looked like they have been preserved in great condition. Friendly monks waited inside some of them to sell you prayer scrolls that you could tie outside of the building, or a wooden plate that you could use to ask "the gods" for luck.

Oh, and as an odd side note we were approached by a "Japanese" man from Buffalo, NY. He wanted to know if we had heard of, "The Family International." Guess what, random knowledge prevails, and I did happen to know about them. They are a cult - a cult that kidnaps the children of those who try to leave it. I promptly rejected him and left as fast as possible.

After receiving our fill of water features, temples and shrines we headed into Ueno Zoo to see what they had to offer. In general there was only the standard fair, with the exception of a couple of rare birds, a red panda and a armadillo on steroids. It was a nice zoo though, with lots of little kids running around. Japanese kids really are the cutest.

Good views, good weather, and a good vegetarian dinner made for a very good day. Click here to see a small sample of all the pictures we took today.