Today we headed off to Ueno park again, mainly to see how much different it looked 3 weeks later. And, MAN does it ever. All the pink has now turned to green. I would've never believed it could've looked so different! (While we were there, there were a bunch of school groups touring it as well)
To show the vast difference between our first trip to Ueno park and the second time thru (3 weeks later), I've put together a couple of side-by-side pictures. The picture on the left is what the park looked like 3 weeks ago (around the first of April) and now. Its amazing that its so different!
After doing a bit of shopping at the Ueno shopping arcade (to pick up some gifts and such), we went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It was a lot bigger than I expected. The building itself was pretty neat looking too.
They happened to have a special exhibition on one of Japan's most famous swordsman, Musashi, while we were there as well.
We took our time at the museum and made sure we got to see everything there. I liked the way it was laid out (different sections of the museum dedicated to different parts in Japan's history).
They had all kinds of different things on display, ranging from samurai armor:
to traditional kimonos:
to screens with detail scenes painted on them:
to things such as examples of how wood block prints are made (left picture below), WWII memorabilia (middle picture below), and models of what old Japan cities and buildings looked like. It was a very interesting place to see, and I would definitely recommend it to other people as well.
After the checking out the museum, we headed back to Asakusa to get all the last minute gifts for people and such. After that it was a brief stop at Ebisu to check out the Sapporo beer museum because Ted wanted to stop there and buy some beer mugs/glasses for a couple of his friends. I ended up picking up a hat while I was there as well.
Next it was off to Harajuku to check out the Book Off there. Once again, I dropped some cash picking up some used CDs and DVDs. Harajuku was pretty busy tonight (being Friday night and all).
We quickly did our shopping there though, because our last stop was at Shibuya to meet up with my friend Fumika.
Our plans were to meet at Hachiko (the famous dog statue built for a dog who waited at the station for like 10 years after his master died.) It is a very popular meeting place for people, and boy was it ever crowded tonight. I was almost afraid we weren't gonna be able to find Fumika. But, apparently, she didn't have any trouble spotting me. -_^.
Fumika then took us to the restaurant named Gompachi where she had reservations. It served Japanese food ranging from kushiyaki (grilled skewers), to soba and other traditional Japanese cuisine. It seemed to be a very popular restaurant (it was pretty full), but I could tell why. It was VERY good. Everything I ate tasted great! Great suggestion Fumika! ^_^
I was really glad that we were able to meet up with Fumika at least one day while I was here. I was afraid we might not be able to. But, it was great being able to catch up on everything that's been going on in the past 6 months or so. She seems to be doing well. Hopefully we'll be able to meet again sometime soon. We spent a wonderful couple of hours at the restaurant eating, talking, and just generally catching up.
But, unfortunately as these kind of things do, it seemed to rush by pretty quickly. Next thing, it was time to say goodbye and catch the last train back to the hotel (on which, there was just about every level of drunken-ness possible. heh heh).
Tonight is the joy of trying to fit all my crap in my luggage. I don't know if that'll ever happen....
