The train from Narita took 40 minutes to get to the Ueno Station.
Just as we stepped outside it started to pour and it took about 10 minutes of getting drenched to find our hotel - the Sardonyx Ueno. They were nice to hand us towels to dry off as we walked in the door.
Since we arrived at our hotel about 5:00pm we only had an evening and morning to cruise around Tokyo.
We walked to the Uenookachimachi 上野御徒町 Subway station and took the train to Shibuyu. On the way to the station we struck-out trying to find an ATM that would take our card - none even had any English.
Shibuyu was big, bright and crowded. We walked for awhile and decided to go back to Ueno for dinner since there seemed to be a lot going on we passed on the way to the subway (My photos of the nightlife are on the other camera). We found a Chase ATM, but my exchange calculation was off by a decimal place and we ended up with $500 of Yen instead of $50.
One of the nice things about Tokyo is there aren't touts everywhere trying to get you into their restaurant or shop, or sell you fake watches, or play some rigged dice game. There was one guy with a Schwarma stand that yelled at me "hey basketball player, hey big fish" - I've never been called Big Fish before.
I was hoping for Yaki for dinner, but we tried at one place and they turned us away saying I think the equivalent of "kitchen is closed". The other place handed me menu in English and the options were my less favorite parts of a cow to eat... ear, heart, throat, rectum. We settled for Ramen and it didn't disappoint.
After dinner the travel had caught up with us so we retired to our shoebox of a room. One double bed with just enough room for one person to walk around.
Interesting sink/shower fixture...
And woke up at 6am... So we went out to the neighborhood. There is a really nice park (Ueno Park) with a huge lake of lotus plants that was popular with the photographers early on a Sunday morning.
There was also this cat...
I'm fascinated with all the vending machine drinks.
Breakfast at a cafe.
And some other snacks to get rid of some change. This one is green beans and hot dogs on rye bread.
It was time to head back to the airport, so we packed up and walked back to the train station.
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