Tokyo Highlights

This morning we took the shinkansen to Tokyo for a quick trip to some of the famous highlights of Tokyo. We started in Ueno Park. It's a very international place, and has kind of a fun vibe most of the time, so we walked around and enjoyed the atmosphere. A more serious part of the park is the small peace memorial that I have referred to before. There is a monument with a flame that was lit from the fires burning in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace memorials. That's the picture with Tim. Next we went for a short trip through the National Art Museum to see a small sampling of the permanent collection there that focuses on the history of Japan. Like I mentioned, we didn't stay long, but it's an amazing place to get a feel for Japanese culture, art and history even if you have just a short time.

Next we visited the Akihabara "Electric Town" district. I hadn't been there since the violence that occurred several weeks back, and even though it seemed to be mostly back to normal, they have installed some security and crowd control devices that were not there before. It's sad that there are mentally troubled people who can't find the help that they need, and also sad that the violence there has caused so many repercussions.

We went to a much more light-hearted place after that: Harajuku. There weren't as many cosplayers there today as there are sometimes, but it was fun to see the scene and also listen to the street performers and watch one magician who was doing a pretty cool trick.

Next we went to Shibuya and checked out Tower Records there. That music store has the reputation of stocking nearly any mainstream artist's CD ever produced. People say that if you can't find a CD there, it doesn't exist. A little bit of an exaggeration probably, but a fun place anyway.

After that, we went to the observation deck on the 44th (?) floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku. There are other observation areas in buildings in Tokyo, but this is the only significant one that's free. It's not quite as nice as the others I've been to (the other buildings very carefully arrange the lighting so there are few reflections in the windows for picture takers) but I did manage to get one picture that turned out OK of the amazing sunset. Just after I took this picture, a huge storm was moving past to the north. I took a couple of videos of that, and will try to post them later.

We just got home about 90 minutes ago. Tomorrow we're planning to go to Nikko, and I've got to go to bed.

More later . . .