Woke up around 5:45am, got up and showered, then caught up on the news and blogs. I see Gingrich is still quite the douche. Well, now that we've got that nastiness out of the way I'm going to jump into my day today. This morning I headed over to Ueno park. It looks like they're gearing up for the cherry blossoms to bloom since they have the nice walkway lined with trees. Really looking forward to that. It's gonna be a madhouse, but this should definitely be worth it. Sadly, the blossoms aren't yet blooming so today's pictures won't be as colorful as we'd all like. But I think we're really laying the groundwork for some true highlights in a week or two. Stay tuned!
After Ueno, I headed over to Harajuku. Much to my surprise there was quite the little park there. As Harajuku is known mostly for cosplay, this was unexpected. I guess cosplay-time starts after Sunday mornings, though, since I didn't see any. This does seem like the place for young teens (younger? Older? I cannot tell.) to gather, though, so even though there wasn't much dress-up it was still super packed. Welcome to Tokyo! I'll add the Harajuku pics to a dedicated post after this one. No use making antagonizing the TL;DR crowd (look it up).
Let's jump into the pics. Mom, you'll be happy to know I was pretty liberal with the camera today!
Since I wasn't entirely sure where I was going, I just followed the crowd out of the train station. It looked to me like they were going somewhere so I just followed along...
I'm not sure what this crowd was doing, but I think they're gathering for tours? What I *do* know is that on my way out, this crowd was MUCH bigger. Pic of that to come at the end.
This looks to be the beginning of cherry blossom tree lane, off to the left. It's basically a walkway overhung with cherry blossom trees. This should be AMAZING once they blossom.
Here we're just showing how the trees actually do overhang the walkway.
Could one of our Japanese readers chime in and translate this for us? Or email me and I'll update the post. Thanks in advance!
This is the same walkway as above, except I'm walking back from the far end and I'm on a kind of side walkway. The main thoroughfare is to the right.
Closeup of the lanterns lining the walkway between the cherry blossom trees. Again, any Japanese reader want to translate?
At the far end of Ueno park there is evidently a museum of natural history. And no, mom, I didn't visit the museum. Knowledge is for poseurs! But there's this awesome (literally and figuratively) whale outside! I have a feeling that this may actually be life-sized, but I have no evidence to back up that assertion. They probably mention it in the museum somewhere, though...
That's it for Ueno park. I'll create another post for my aforementioned trip to Harajuku. Two last pics, though. The first one is of some train attendants (Hibiya line at Ueno station). I didn't have a lot of time to snap this one since the train was bearing down on us, but I thought it was kind of fun. The attendant in the foreground is holding a mic, which he uses to make announcements about the destination of the train. I guess. I don't really speak Japanese. I think you can see, hiding behind his arm, another attendant further down the platform. They work in tandem, signaling when it is safe to close the doors. Not like back home where they just shut the doors whether you're in or not.
This last pic is the outdoor platform for the JR Yamanote line (mentioned yesterday. This is the train that runs a ring around Tokyo city). I know what you're all gonna say: I took a picture of a pretty girl on the platform. Sure, there is that. BUT LOOK BEYOND THAT. I just wanted to show how the platforms here are often filled with colorful advertisements, often of the anime type. She actually was quite pretty, though. OH, and instead of the annoying buzzing sound back home (is it a buzzing? Or an annoying chiming? Whatever it is, it's grating.) here they play kind of a new agey song signaling the doors are about to close. It's much more pleasant.
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