Tokyo weekend

We decided to spend the weekend in town. The snow had melted, although the sunshine had yet to appear, and we decided on a bit of culcha. We went to Ueno Park on Saturday, which is home to a number of major galleries and museums and we wondered through, mostly looking at the architecture, including the Museum of Western Art and the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, serene and gorgeous - designed by the guy responsible for the new Moma building in NY. We walked around a lake filled with enormous coy carp and little mandarin ducks, who used the backs of the fish as stepping stones, and avoided the pastel coloured duck shaped paddle boats. Our falling blood sugar level made it difficult to walk past an area of food stalls, offering BBQ corn, fried squid and whole potatoes, spiraled onto a stick and deep fried. Arriving at Ueno station, I was reminded of Oxford Street, just before Christmas, with cheap bags and shoes at knock down prices. Also filled with noisy buildings filled with ever popular slot machines and gambling, illegal apparently in Japan, although you wouldn't know it! You play for ballbearings and which you can redeem for a ticket and directions to an side alley where you can collect your winnings. We snuggled into a little conveyor belt style sushi bar and tucked in to urchin and cuttle fish-topped chunks of rice and a large bowl of delicious miso soup. Although my fishatarianism has been challenged recently, and I think I'm relatively easy going on the squeemishness front, but discovering a large fish eyeball at the bottom of the soup bowl did nearly push me to the edge!

On Sunday we did the tourist thing and visit the oldest shrine at Asakusa, founded 18 March 628! where 2 fishermen found a gold statue in the river. We both took fortune sheets (still work is bad for me apparently, but building a house ok and the lost object will be found). We ducked into the covered market and meandered through rice cracker factories and tourist shops. We also took a walk down a street famous for china goods where we discovered a shop selling the plastic food and bowls displayed outside Japanese restaurants, which despite their super enhanced colours, made us feel hungry. We ate a giant lunch which we cooked on a hot metal plate set into the table, where we cooked 'okonomiyaki', a kind of self cooked tortilla, emerging from the tiny wooden shack with pink faces from the heat. My dream of Sunday night cinema was brought to life with a downloaded copy of 'Chinatown' staring a very young and fanciable Jack Nicholson and a bar of Cadbury's dairy milk.