A Walk in the Park and Fake Yakitori

Buy a random book from ye olde jidouhanbaiki so you won't be bored on the subway! =D

After a short rest at the guesthouse--which was really more like a hostel, bunks and everything--we went out to Ueno-kouen and the Ameyoko area for an evening meander. Ueno Park was Japan's first public park.

A view of the Ameyoko area from Ueno Hill

This is the Saigou Takamori statue in Ueno-kouen...He was a samurai who supported the Meiji Restoration at first, and then changed his loyalties when the government took away the powers of the samurai class. He's the guy Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) is supposed to be in The Last Samurai. In fact, Ueno Hill was where the 1868 last stand of the Tokugawa Loyalists took place, a little over 10 years before the last battle of the Satsuma Rebellion--the Battle of Shiroyama--led by Saigou Takamori.

Here is Kiyomizu Kannon-do temple, which is modeled after Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto. (Kannon is the Japanese name for Kuan Yin or Guanyin, the goddess of mercy in the Buddhist pantheon. 

The main image in this temple is the seated Senju-Kannon (one-thousand-armed Kannon who is protector of those born in the year of the rat), but there is also an image of the "child-growing" Kosodate Kannon. People who wish for good child-bearing and sound child-growing offer dolls as substitues for their children. There's a well-known memorial service for dolls held in September as well.

There are lots of signs up around and nearby the temple rallying for it to be included as a World Cultural Heritage Sight as well...

In the park, we found this totem pole belonging to the Tokyo chapter of Lions Club International, a volunteer organization. Definitely an odd-looking piece: kind of a mix between Asian and Northwestern Native American styles.

After sunset, we wandered around the Ameyayokochou Arcade, a kind of shabby but brightly lit market. We meandered through some shops, and I tried out the new rhythm-game fad in Japan: Taiko no Tatsujin. It's pretty much the same idea as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, DDR, etc. Beat the drum with the appropriate strikes in the correct rhythm to popular songs, J-pop, anime, classical, traditional Japanese. (It's funny, the drum sounds--the dum, ka, and teks--are almost the same translated into Japanese.) We ate a little bit at this dingy side-street place, but they didn't really serve us the yakitori we wanted...it was various parts of the chicken on kabobs. Now, it's normal for the yakitori selection to include liver, heart, skin, white meat, wing meat, even small intestines, but those kabobs remaing on the plate in the below picture--that was pretty much pure fat. Eugh. Literally fat on a stick.

We ended up eating at McDonald's...again. McDonald's here are a lot nicer than those in America, although I do hear that they've improved back home. I wouldn't really know, I haven't eaten at a McDonald's in the US since I was in elementary school. Some of the Mickey D's in Tokyo had traditional Chicken McNuggets, but most of the ones I've been to have this delightful thing called Shaka Shaka Chicken instead. It's fried chicken patty they give you in a bag. You pick a seasoning, lemon or pepper for example, and pour it into the top of the bag, and, guess what? Shaka shaka! You open the bag at the tear near the bottom and you have seasoned fried chicken patty. Some other items on the Japanese menu are: Teriyaki McBurger, Ebi Filet-O, and sometimes they have things like Chicken Katsu Burger, Ume Nuggets, and Tamago Double Mac.
During our last walk before we returned to the guesthouse for the night, we were pretty sure we saw some prostitutes down this one street. One of my teachers said that you can't tell by the way women dress if they're prostitutes...But I'm pretty sure. They didn't look exactly skanky or anything. But it wasn't just the fact they were wearing short coats over short dresses and stilettos, or the way they were made-up. It was the way they were waiting expectantly at the sides of the street, with large men lurking around here and there...

On a completely different and adorable note:
Engrish of the Day:

A gift bag I found at a 7/11 near the guesthouse...The most pitiful and adorable Engrish I've seen yet. I ended the bag buying it for me mum. =P