Days 3 and 4: Ginza and Ueno

This post is going to be a 2 for 1, since we didn't post anything yesterday.

Excuse me, how much does this cost?


The first place we went yesterday was to the Bridgestone Art Museum. It was stuffed in an entirely boring building, and it was mostly only luck that we noticed where it was. They had sinks that had built-in soap dispensers and hand driers.


This was in front of a building across from the museum. That's about all we know about it.


This is an example of one of the many helpful signs there are in the subway.


And the machines where you buy your tickets. We haven't grabbed a picture yet, but the fare calculation maps are totally insane. Luckily we bought preloaded subway cards so we just have to swipe the card at every subway gate so we don't have to figure out the fares or use the fare machines.


When we were in Ginza we stopped at the Sony building, which was supposed to be their flagship store and showcase all their new (and sometimes yet-to-be released) products. The actual store was somewhat disappointing, they seem to mostly be pushing their 3D TVs at the moment. But, apparently they were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Peanuts comic with "Snoopy Love Ginza". So the entire building was full of various snoopy things, there was a 3D movie playing on the top floor, and you could get a 3D picture of yourself taken with Peanuts characters.

They had stamp passports, and on the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th floors of the buildings they had stamp stations where you could collect a stamp to complete your passport. If you took the completed passport to the main floor, you got to draw a marble from a bag to see what prize you got. We both got the consolation prize, a "Snoopy Love Ginza" sticker.


I was finally able to get some of the help I so desperately need.


We couldn't pass up the chance to visit another Don Quixote, and we got a couple more pictures to better illustrate the experience. Their sales signs and price signs are quite loud.


They had a totally Japanified version of the sham-wow infomercial. Not only had they dubbed some excited Japanese guy over Vince, they added all the amazing sound effects that you'd expect from a Japanese commercial.


These were little cardboard boats full of tiny dried crabs or fish with sauce and sesame seeds.


Soft-serve ice cream in a squeeze tube.


Everywhere you went in the store there were DVD players playing ads and boomboxes playing music or commercials. They also piped their store's themesong endlessly over the PA. The whole store is total sensory overload. The product on the left is some kind of hangover cure. It had an ad of a businessman drinking it and immediately perking up so he could go to work.


Spongebob and Elmo humidifiers. Not pictured, but they have everything at this store! Including $2500 bottles of Dom Perignon, and used (but still rather expensive) Louis Vutton handbags. Pretty odd, considering it's for the most part a discount store.


At the end of the day we went home to have our thanksgiving dinner. We'd hoped to find some more theme foods, but it didn't quite work out. For one thing the convenience store was sold out of croquettes (deep fried mashed potatoes). We did manage to find pumpkin ice cream


Pumpkin Pockey (cookie sticks)


And we brought this from home. This was what inspired the whole thanksgiving dinner idea since we realized we would be away from home for thanksgiving. So happy thanksgiving everyone, and we hope your meals were better than ours :)


Today we found the first real Pepsi I'd seen all trip. Everywhere else they only have this horrible stuff called "Pepsi Nex", which is this horrible drink that at first seems less sweet than pepsi, but has a sickeningly sweet aftertaste. It doesn't taste much like pepsi, and it's supposed to be a high caffeine energy drink.


On the way to Ueno (which was where we spent most of today) we found this train car in the middle of nowhere special. All the explanations were in Japanese only, so we didn't find out anything about it.


At the park in Ueno, the fish seemed to have figured out where the park benches were, because they were all clustered around the areas near the benches climbing all over each other to get as close as possible.


There was one turtle in amongst the bunch.


A nice view of one of the lakes in the park


and the swan-shaped paddleboats. The rental place wasn't open yet, so we didn't get to see them out on the water.


Another picture of the fishes near a different bench.


Apparently, the birds in the park refuse to be fed.


In the middle of the lakes, there's a few temples and shrines


The other lakes besides the paddle boat lake were entirely filled with lotus plants. It was impossible to get a photo that showed the impressive scale of it all.


An ice cream vending machine. Note especially the ice cream bar that's entirely covered in an outer crust of ice cream cone.


Vending machines that sell you cups which it fills with the drink. These actually turned out to be a ripoff, as even the "large" cups are pretty tiny. If you buy a prepackaged drink you get much more for the same price. You do get ice in your cup if you buy it from the cup machine though, which I guess is nice.


For some sense of scale, the upper lake is the paddleboat lake shown above. The entirety of the other lakes was lotus plants.


We weren't sure which cats this sign referred to. We didn't see any feral cats around.


Once the zoo opened, that was where we spent a good portion of our day.


There was a very colorful monorail that you could take between the east and west halves of the zoo. They also had stamps that you could get at either end, so we collected them both even though we didn't get a prize this time.


This old guy was rocking clown hair.


After the zoo we explored the rest of the park, which had a bunch of shrines and temples around it. This one is famous for the 200+ stone and copper lanterns on the grounds.


We didn't go in this one, but I liked the entrance.


This is one that women go to if they have difficulty having children. Erika wanted to stay away from it just in case.


And after the park we explored the shopping district in the area which is mostly in very packed tiny side streets.


This was our mystery drink of the day. It looked like some sort of corn chowder drink (and it was served hot!). We weren't brave enough, and neither of us wanted a hot drink since it was quite hot and humid today. [Subsequent internet research suggests that it probably is a can of soup.]


This guy had a one-man-band setup in the park with xylophones and drums.


And, now we're just at the hotel recovering from the day.