I’m not sure if I’m overdoing it, but I still don’t feel 100% and I stayed out over 8 hours wandering around Tokyo. It was a great day when I left but the air here is probably not as good as it is in Oregon. On top of all the industrial effluent in the air, Oregon has a nice ocean to clean the air before we get it. Japan has the deserts of China. I’m not quite sure of the weather here either. Portland takes a while to heat up or cool down and there’s none of that here.

The weather meant it sounded like a good day to head to Asakusa and the first picture, at least the dark part underneath the gate, probably is a familiar view to anyone who has seen pictures of Japan. It’s the Grand Kaminarimon Gate with the huge lantern that’s in all the guide books.

Monday was the day to go, too. Lots of tourists and lots of them from the US and Europe from their accents but it looked like some where using the area for more traditional purposes as well.

The streets to Sensoji Temple and Akasaka Jinja are lined by traditional festival shops but I passed by all the sweets and trinkets that they offered. I saw a lot of the sorts of things I took to Goodwill the past two weeks.

There’s another gate and then the approach to the temple.

 I got the temple confused with the shrine which was smaller and next to it.

I wandered around the neighborhood for a while before I went to for a river boat ride. I thought I might be on one of the traditional boats.

But the one for the river boat rides are a bit nicer.

Lots more views of the Sky Tree, the tallest tower something-something-Japanese-I-couldn’t-understand.

Several times they repeated that the Sky Tree was the tallest something-something-something-in-Japanese.

We went under several bridges and I wasn’t enough of a bridge otaku to take pictures of all of them.

It was lunchtime, so I had what they were selling: ice cream with the view of another bridge.

I guess Gozilla hasn’t been around for a while because I saw the Tokyo Tower as well.

After that I went for a disappointing visit to the Asahi Breweries headquarters. It’s in all the guidebooks as having several restaurants but there really isn’t anything interesting. I saw a lot of disappointed-looking (and thirsty-looking) foreigners, and I include myself in that group.

The building on the left is supposed to look like it has head on it (like a proper beer) and the gold thing on the right is a mystery to me. After that I walked all the way across the neighborhood to Kappabashi Dougai which is a street that sells kitchenware for restaurants as far as you can see in the panorama shot. There were plates and glassware as well and a couple of shops selling the food models you see in front of a lot of Japanese restaurants. I also saw a store with a giant dinosaur head in it but I didn’t want to stop to ask. There was a Coca-Cola memorabilia store with a working 1940’s Coke machine modernized for ¥150 Cokes.

What there wasn’t was a lot of real restaurants. Every time I saw an Italian menu sign, it was just in front of a store selling menu signs. Every time I saw plastic food it was just for a store selling plastic food. I ended up at Mos Burger because, well, I LIKE Mos Burger and sometimes I just need to be number 1.

It was only a couple of miles to Ueno, so I decided it was time to go on another cross-Tokyo trek. What I found was that the street I was on between Asakusa and Ueno sells a lot of home Buddhist shrines that people have when someone dies. I also found another shrine so of course I visited it. I wasn’t the only one though it was pretty deserted.

I finally made it to Ueno Station but I didn’t feel like visiting the park or the zoo quite so late in the day.

I guess I wasn’t through walking because I started off towards Akihabara. There are a lot of weird jewelry shops between Ueno and Akihabara, selling necklaces, including several stores with what I would consider odd looking south Asian necklaces. But those weren’t for me.

I just kept going and kept asking deliverymen if I was still going the right way and I finally made it. I saw a lot of iffy iPhone accessories, went to my usual mecca of small parts, and generally wandered around until I got tired and got on the train for the hotel. I finally got off the train about 6:15PM and it was POURING. I went inside to get my bearings, my umbrella, and look for the key card I lost in the morning. (I wasn’t the only one who lost his key this morning. There was a “kid” in his underwear at the front desk this morning asking to be let back in his room.)

It was still POURING when I left for dinner and so I just went downstairs to the udon shop. It was raining so hard I didn’t even want to go across the street.

Of course it wasn’t raining much at all by the time I was done and I felt a little foolish for going out to dinner when I did. If I just waited I could have gone wherever I wanted. I like udon, so it wasn’t that big a deal. I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow.