Ueno Park

Backing up a bit... A few weekends ago I went to Ueno Park with some of the girls. It is an enormous park located at a major Tokyo metropolitain train stop only 10 or 15 minutes away from Horikiri-Shobuen (my train station). The park is famous for the zoo, for all of the museums (it's kind of comprable to the Washington DC square in this regard), the homeless people all over the place, and the generally parkish mood. There were a lot of couples holding hands and old people walking around enjoying the outdoors. Maybe Ueno Park could be compared to a big huge Central Park... a pause for nature in the middle of a huge crazy city.
When we got to the Ueno Station, we walked around an arcade (streets with tons of shops and restaurants) for awhile and tried to find a place to eat. I ended up getting a really good crepe which the guy made right in front of us. It was pretty good, but super small. The weather was at that stage where it feels like it is hesitating before it rains. And then all of a sudden it started raining, so we all ducked under cover and hid for awhile. Everyone has umbrella's here (the word for umbrella is kasa, pronounced like the spanish word casa) and it's crazy to see them all out when it rains. Also, there are all these little umbrella stands at the entrance to everywhere... and one time we went into a store and they gave us little baggies (they looked like good dog-walking poop bags) to put our wet umbrellas in while we shopped.
We then went into the park and walked around for awhile. The bugs here make such loud noises. Maybe they do in the United States and I am just used to their ambience, but here they seem sooooo overwhelming. The layout of the park is incredibly beautiful. There are really wide pathways and almost like promenades weaving through the park and then there are areas of complete natural foliage. And then, tucked away in all of the little corners and pockets of the park are Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines and other little structures.
We went into one temple which was up on a hill. There was a water purifying thing in the front... I'm not sure what it's called, but what you do is take a ladle of water, pour it into your hand, put the water into your mouth and then spit it out onto this surface of pebbles. And once you've done this you are cleansed of your sins. So we all did it. I think everyone should probably do this at some point in their life ha ha. The inside of the temple was very calm. I didn't photographs of the inside because I didn't want to be disrespectful, but there was a lot of wood and a lot of gold and a lot of candles. There is this huge rope (maybe 5" diameter) that hangs from the rafters at the front of the entrance and is attached to a big gong (is that the right word?) and before entering the temple, a lot of people would swing the rope and bang the gong once or twice. While we were walking around in the temple a huge downpour started and so we all just sat under the huge overhanging roof and watched the rain. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, I took a short movie of the rain falling on the roof, but unfortunately I don't think that I can post videos on this website. Anyway, we waited for the rain to stop and then Becca and I decided to go to Ueno Zoo. We split up from the rest of the group because they were not as eager to see the animals. Oh well.
The zoo was pretty cool, but I noticed that the areas for people are much nicer than the areas for the animals. It's not like some of the zoos that I have been to in the US where mini-ecosystems are built for the animals. This was more like a little animal prison where each animal was inside a little barred area. We saw some pretty cool stuff, but there were really crappy penguins. I was excited to see the big huge emperor penguins, but their exhibit was under construction. We saw the infamous panda bear which was pretty cool, but I felt really bad for it because it was just pacing around his little room. Maybe he was having an anxiety attack.
The zoo was pretty big, actually. There was an incredible, enormous pond (well, almost like a small lake) which had tons of enormous lily pads covering the surface. They weren't actually lily pads, but I forgot the name of what they were. In any case, they were huge... the leaves were sometimes 2ft in diameter and since it had just rained they had little pools of water sitting in the middle. Becca and I were pretty entertained, we played with the rain drops for awhile. And then we left the park.
One thing that I thought was pretty cool was that from the park is that above the treeline you could see the skyrise buildings of Tokyo. The park is so large that the buildings look very distant, but it was just really cool to see such contrasting environments in the same frame.
I'll write another article this weekend.... any votes: Ginza (Okonomiyaki dinner), Sumo Wrestling, Clubbing in Shibuya and fish Market, Kabuki Theater, Typical Day here, anything else? all of the above? Let me know.

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