Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Ueno, Ameyoko and Akihabara (Thu 2/11 & Fri 2/12)

I forgot to make a post yesterday, so here's what I did. I woke up a little late and walked around Ikebukuro (池袋) a bit. I found the mall called Sunshine City, and got an oyakodon / soba combo for lunch. I came back and took a break. Then I headed to Shibuya for the evening. I was trying to find a club called Lush because I saw that they had live music, but I couldn't find the place for the life of me. But in all my wandering I passed a place with a fantastic smell, turned around and saw a curry place and decided to end my search and fill my belly. I didn't take any pictures that day, because it was raining pretty constantly (light for the first half of the day, and getting pretty heavy by night fall).

Today, I woke up a bit earlier, and got out about 10am, and when I stepped out onto the street, I noticed little white things falling from the sky every once in a while. At first I thought I was seeing things. Later in the day it got a bit heavier, but never enough to stick. I set out for Ueno (上野) thinking that if the snow picked up, it could make the park there really pretty. I ended up going to the Tokyo National Museum and saw their regular exhibit on various artifacts from Japanese history as well as a special exhibit on extremely old statues called Dogu. I took some pictures, but none were allowed in the Dogu exhibit.









Then after I left there I saw a sign for Ueno Toshogu Botanbana (上野 　東照宮　ぼたん花). Botanbana is the peony flower (I just now looked it up). I had no idea what this was ... so I decided to check it out. It was a little path through a bunch of covered flowers, and it would have been so much prettier with a heavy snow, but here's what it looked like anyway.







Then at the end of the path was a little tea house, and I immediately noticed a sign that said amazake (甘酒) or sweet sake, so I decided to get a cup. There was no one else around, so I decided to try talking to one of the ladies that were running the place. Like a little kid, I was asking her to explain things, like what a particular sign meant (since I can't recognize enough kanji yet)

Then I walked to Ameyoko (I had to ask another random lady how to read yoko : 横) and got a bunch of stuff from random food stands, like a tiny okonomiyaki that they called ameyokoyaki.



I walked around some more, got some takoyaki and realized that I had walked to the Okachimachi station, and figured I was half way to Akihabara, and I'd just walk the rest of the way. I got some tonkotsu ramen on the restaurant floor of Yodobashi camera, got a japanese review book, walked around a bit and finally took a train back to Ikebukuro.

Here's a link to the whole photo set for today.