Yesterday we started off the morning with a trip to the Meiji Shinto Shrine and Japan's version of Central Park. It was pretty cool, though I'm a sucker for Shinto shrines. In fact, I got a miniature Shinto shrine that college students apparently are supposed to put on their desks for luck with studying.
From there we took a walk to the Imperial Palace of Tokyo, where the current Emperor and his family resides. It was neat, but we couldn't really get close to it.
After that we went to Ueno, another district of Tokyo. There, we finally saw some cherry blossoms.
We also saw the statue of Saigo Takamori, who was the true "last samurai" of Japan (not Tom Cruise).
From there we went to the Tokyo National Museum.
There was some cool artwork and artifacts, as well as a garden in the back. I was happy to see swords made by Masamune and Muramasa.
We then went to the final stop on our Japan trip itinerary: the Kaminarimon Gate and Sensoji Temple.
The temple was particularly cool because it was built in 628 AD.
And that was it for our itinerary stuff; we were on our own. Me and two other guys ended up going to Shibuya to check it out, and had dinner at a small (and very good) ramen shop.
After that, we took the subway back to Ikebukuro and called it a night.
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Today I got up around 8am. Left with ten other students to go to Akihabara. We went to a large electronics/book store there. I bought a couple of volumes of Bleach manga, since they were about $1 each. After that, a few guys left for Ueno and the rest of the group wanted to go to another manga store. I walked down a main street of Akihabara for a while, but there were mostly just restaurants there.
After about half an hour, I decided to go to Ueno myself and see if I could find the other guys. I arrived there a little after 11:30 and decided to check either the Science Museum or the Ueno Zoo. Ended up going to the zoo; it happened to be one of the three days a year that it had free admission. Ueno Zoo is Japan's largest zoo, and there were literally thousands of people there. After 15-20 minutes of wandering around, my 1337 bounty hunter skills paid off and I found two of the guys from my group. Eventually met up with the third guy and we spent about 2 hours at the zoo.
After that, one of the guys went off to the Science Museum while the rest of us traveled to Sengakuji to see Sengakuji Temple, where the 47 Ronin were buried.
We got to see the well where Oishi washed Lord Kira's head before placing it on the grave of his master, Lord Asano.
After that we went back to Ikebukuro. One guy went back to the hotel, so myself and the other guy headed off to "Sunshine City," a massive, 60-story store/entertainment center with a really ghey name. The elevator to the 60th floor was pretty sick, though, and went so fast that it made everyone's eardrums pop.
We didn't check the building out, just went right to the top floor, where you could look out large windows and get a full view of Tokyo. It was pretty crazy: 360 degrees of city into infinity.
It was like looking out on Coruscant in Star Wars.
We went back to the hotel and hung out for a little while, then I went out to eat with 8 other people. We stopped in a place that looked good, but it ended up being pretty horrible. The menus were computer pads all in Japanese, and we couldn't figure out what anything was or how to actually order it (not to mention they didn't really do much in the way of customer service there). After receiving several random drinks and some extremely terrible shiskabob-like chicken, we pretty much left our money on the table and ran out of the restaurant. It was pretty expensive, too. Ended up eating a much more satisfying meal at the ramen place we'd eaten dinner at the first night here. From there we went back to the hotel, and that was it for the night.
Tomorrow is our last day in Japan. Hopefully I'll get some good sightseeing in.
