Ueno

We took the metro to Ueno this morning to find Evan some jeans and to visit the national museum. For breakfast/brunch we found a big department store with a food hall in the basement. It was an extremely impressive place - comparable to the Harrods or Le Bon Marche food halls - with anything you could possibly want: pastry, sushi, soba, tempura, yakitori, tonkatsu, all kinds of dumplings including siu mai and gyoza, and a market full of ingredients including any seafood product you could think of. I refrained from taking pictures but I couldn't resist one of the most gigantic pile of seaweed known to man.




Evan and Alaina had some gyoza and sushi rolls.
I went up to a yakitori stall and somehow got across to the lady that I wanted her to pick some out for me. They are all different cuts of chicken, but they weren't labeled. The large balls were a bit intimidating... I translated the word later to 'meatball.' They had a pate-like taste, so definitely some type of internal organ in there. It was all good though, particularly with the sweet sauce poured over. I also bought an onigiri with some type of roe in it...pretty good too. (Onigiri is just a triangle of rice stuffed with something and wrapped in seaweed)


Evan took off by himself to find some jeans at some stores he knew about nearby, so Alaina and I walked through the park on the way to the National Museum


We stumbled upon a display of bonsai trees - so pretty.


(Charlie Brown bonsai)



Then came the museum. I didn't take pictures inside. It was nice, if a bit small. They had all sorts of things, like pottery, tapestries, paintings, sculpture, clothing. The most impressive were the laquerware objects inlaid with mother of pearl. You've all seen examples of this before - it's very typically associated with Japan (and was once referred to as 'Japan'), just as porcelain is associated with China.

After that I split up with the others. They went to the island of Odaiba, and I went off to look around Ueno by myself and make a stop in Ginza on my way back to the hotel. In Ueno there is an area that is like a permanent street fair with tons of little stalls with clothing, food, souvenirs, housewares, etc. It was packed with people - mostly locals including kids in their school uniforms. In Ginza I stopped into a few huge toy stores to see if I could find any super-unusual and cool toys or little gifts. The stores were fun, but there wasn't much I haven't seen at home in Japanese specialty shops. Of course I stopped to hug the massive Totoros.

-K

p.s. comment! no, really.