Ueno & Akihabara

Today we did a mixture of park, museums and Anime. Nice combo!  Ueno park is a large park quite like central park in that is large with ponds and a zoo.  Also enclosed in the park are several shrines and temples.  Surrounding the park are many museums.  After visiting the Tokyo National Museum, we headed over to the Edo Tokyo Museum (not in Ueno by the way).  The two museums were very different.  The Tokyo National Museums houses many pieces of Japanese art and antiques while the Edo Tokyo Museum contains scale models as well as life size artifacts of life in the Edo period.  The Edo Museum was very hands on and interactive. After we tired of museum wandering, we took the metro over to the electronics and Anime area of Akihabara.  One shop called Animate had over 7 floors w/ 2 rooms per floor with everything Anime.  David was in heaven (too bad none of the DVDs would work in the US), I just shuffled along with the crowd.  After the Anime overloaded we sat down to a delicious sushi dinner.  I really wonder if I will ever look at sushi in the States the same again....

17th Century Toshogu Shrine located in Ueno Park.

Part of the shrine, I believe these are offering/prayer requests.

Statues of deities inside the Tokyo National Museum. (sorry I can't be more specific, but it's not Italian Renaissance art).

Samurai armor also from inside the Tokyo National Museum.

I can ride in style inside my palanquin (part of the hands on experience in the Edo Tokyo Museum). (um..what's up with my cheesy smile there? David doesn't warn me of when he's actually going to take the photo!).

Or I can keep up with the hard working peasants (this was not easy folks, those things were heavy!).

Stopped for a treat of Mochi Icecream.  It's ice cream incased in a chewy exterior made from pulverized sticky rice.  David got green tea flavor (hence the green color) and I had chocolate. Quite tasty.

How can you describe the best sushi ever?  I mean there's no fishiness to it.  It literally melts in your mouth.  

The upper two pieces are fatty tuna, this stuff is heaven.

And they guys were literally taking fish out of the tank and filleting them on the spot.  Talk about fresh!