Annyong Haseyo: Tokyo, Japan July 30-August 3

We arrived early enough in the day in Tokyo to hunt down our hostel in Ueno. This place was amusing, you had to step over the first single bed to get to the next one, that was how small the room was. so we made a point to not spend any time there at all. We went to Ropponggi Hills to look at a few of the art galleries that were in the area. The first stop was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Institute. There was an exhibit of European still-life paintings, an amazing style of painting that often involved metaphor and symbolic imagery of death. The second stop was the Fujifilm building, which housed a small museum with amazing stereoscopic images, both old and new, as well as several galleries. Most of the photography wasn't very remarkable, however there was a black and white exhibit that struck me as very intimate and exposing of candid Japanese culture. So I purchased a book with all the photographs in it, I'll bring bit back to Canada and show you guys, have no fear. After that we wandered back to Ueno Park to see what it would be like, as we were bringing the family in there in a couple days, and since we were so close, we decided to have a glance. It was definitely nice, and we visited another gallery in a free gallery. It was cool to see some contemporary Japanese art, but I wish we could've seen more.

Early the next day we worked our way to Asakusa to find our Ryokan and check in early enough so that I could go to the airport and pick up Mom, Dad, and Kristen, and bring them straight to the bed, as they would be coming off a 9 hour flight and over 20 hours of traveling. I took the Skyliner train to the airport to meet their arrival. They were in good shape though, a little excited to be there, yet a little overwhelmed in the process of getting back to the hotel, a process involving negotiating trains, subway stations, and crowded sidewalks with luggage.

Many of the places we would visit in the next few days we had been to at least once already, such as Shibuya, Harajuku, Ueno Park, Ropponggi Hills, with the exception of the Asakusa shrine called Senso-ji, as well as a park in central Tokyo that used to be the Tokyo palace. So here I enclose some photos from those days. Mom wrote down a lot of information about the places and took lots of pics.

These pics are from Senso-ji:

At Ropponggi Hills, we went to the top of Mori tower to see the view and look at a strange aquarium show:

In Ueno Park, we saw several temples and interesting shrines. The zoo was notable as well, though not as impressive as the Seoul Zoo in size, the selection of animals was very diverse: