Continued from Ueno Day 3.

Since we took a nap all afternoon until 11:30pm at night, we spent the whole night in our hotel room entertaining the baby and taking little naps here and there. Want to visit a museum today, but it doesn’t open until 9:30am…that’s a long time to just sit around our hotel room.

The Japanese have the oddest shows on tv. We saw several shows where there’s a male cross dresser as one of the presenters on the show. Sometimes they’ll talk in a shrieking falsetto, and others would talk in their normal deep voice.  We also see quite a few crossdressers while walking around. Seems like its a pretty common thing here.

Finally, at around 8:45am, we made it out the door!!! It rained all day yesterday, but today it’s cloudy and dry, perfect. There are several museums inside Ueno Park, we are deciding between an art museum and the Tokyo National Museum.

Still sweeping leaves the old school way.

One of the first thing we realized was how much the heavy rain had caused the majority of the sakura blossoms to fall. When we visited two days ago, the trees were practically white with the color of flower petals. Today, many of the trees are pink, because that’s the color of the flower bud after the petals have fallen away. Seeing this made us realize how lucky we were to be able to come two days earlier to see the sakura in full bloom. We really really lucked out!!

National museum at the far end of the park.

Got 30 minutes to kill, let’s support an American business.

While RL gets a drink, I wait outside in this beautiful weather with PL. Ahhhh, so peaceful.

Their current special, apricot honey soy. I don’t think there’s any coffee in it though. The small size here in Japan is the equivalent of a kid’s size cup in America.

The art museum. We saw the preview guide posted outside and decided to go to the National Museum instead. We figured that we’ll see more Japan specific exhibits at the National Museum.

Pinky up for this frou frou drink.

Look at those barren sakura trees and all those petals on the ground.

OK, National Museum, here we go.

Just a bit before 9:30am, so lines haven’t opened yet. Apparently, we get a special discount price because we are coming here with a child. Cool.

Let’s do this!

I believe these are little pots that hold water, perhaps for ink wells?

Looking out the garden behind the museum.

Cool! One of the prints by Hokusai!! If you search for The Great Wave off Kanagawa, you’ll instantly recognize his work. Unfortunately, even though his most famous works are held here at the National Museum, they are not currently on display. We asked the information desk, and they told us that to preserve them, they are only on display about two weeks out of the year. Poop, would have been awesome to see them!

Another Hokusai.

Yet another Hokusai. I love his use of color, so vibrant!

The title of this is Beauties under Cherry Tree, to which RL replied that they were not attractive ladies…and they really weren’t.

Samurai armor.

Interesting animal ears on this one.

Well, that was fun. There are actually a couple of buildings in the National Museum complex, but we were too tired to go visit. Kind of cool to see some of Hokusai’s stuff though.

The sign warning of a bump in the carpet, which RL promptly tripped on. I laughed! Hahaha.

In the postcard section, they had some of Hokusai’s most famous works. Very regrettable that we weren’t able to view them this time. Though, makes me feel better that they are only on display for a very short period out of the year. I would have kicked myself if they are on display almost permanently except for the few days that we are here.

It’s such a beautiful day, gotta go take a look at the garden behind the museum. RL keeps taking crooked photos.

Look at all those white petals, the rain did a heavy number on the sakura blooms.

Ahhh, how peaceful…

My peace ruined immediately by my own child, who now wants some of daddy’s green tea ice cream….

Fine, just this once, I’ll give you a drop on your lips.

Nope, that’s it. You want, but can’t have. Daddy’s ice cream!!! Hahaha.

Pretty nice relaxing garden…minus the fussy baby.

Ah, she’s hungry, that’s why she’s fussy. Let’s try some formula and see if she calms down.

Leaving the museum and heading to lunch.

We are starting to see large Chinese tour groups out here.

Baby still fussy, so decided to turn out outward facing so she can look. That seemed to have done the trick…for now.

Look at those barren trees!

Super excited to be outward facing. She gets lots of attention from other people while facing outward. She loves the attention, we’ve created a little diva.

This is what the blossoms look like today.

As a comparison, this is what it looked like two days ago, photo taken from almost the same spot. The difference is even more dramatic in person.

As we continued towards the edge of the park, we see that some of the trees have lost even the pink buds.

Out of the park, and it leads directly to the building with a Kani Doraku, a crab specialty restaurant that I always try to eat at when I come to Japan.

On the 8th floor, we should get a decent view.

This location is definitely more dingy than their flagship location in Osaka.

Get in my belly.

They had just opened, so we were able to snag a nice seat right by the window.

Entrance to Ueno Park seen from our table.

Crab eating specific tool.

Must put hand on everything, then must put everything in mouth!

Little fat belly, just like daddy.

Baby always drinks first.

Alright, here we go!

Baby gets some crab too. Don’t worry, we’ve already did a test run on snow crab in Austin, so we know she’s fine eating it.

Crab paste.

So excited!

Just like mommy.

Of course, baby PL gets fussy halfway through lunch. She’s probably pretty sleepy, so I had to resort to putting her in the baby carrier and walking around the restaurant. Then after that, it’s eating standing up while rocking back and forth.

So many tall skinny buildings here in Tokyo like that teal colored one.

My Asahi Super Dry was Extra Cold. The tap was cold enough to be coated in a layer of frost. It was, indeed, Extra Cold.

Til next time!

Now, we head back to Uniqlo for RL to pick up a couple more items. Then back to our hotel to take an afternoon nap.

Walked by this…had to give it a try.

Again, did not win anything… 🙁

RL got what she needed and now we head back to hotel. It’s almost 1:30pm and we are fading really fast. Remember, our day started over 12 hours ago in the middle of the night. Damn jet lag!

Interesting windowless purple building.

Turntable for automated parking garage.

The haul from 7-Eleven, chicken nuggets. They even include a toothpick to eat it with. Frankly, I miss the good ol’ chicken drumsticks that they used to sell a couple of years ago. Wish they would bring that back.

Nap time, the alarm is set for 6pm…let’s hope for the best…

No surprise, we did not wake up at 6pm. However, we did get up a little bit after 7pm and slowly dragged out legs out of the door at around 8pm. Our bodies are sore from walking around all day earlier today.

Since we weren’t able to get Coco Curry a few days ago, we decided to give it another shot. Found another location close by that we can reach by going through the quiet neighborhood behind our hotel. Much appreciated, since we are both tired and can’t deal with the bustling of people, sounds, and lights that we would need to pass through to reach the other Coco Curry.

Vertical parking garage.

So nice and quiet. Lots of salarymen in suits out and about at this hour. Do they ever see their families during the weekdays if they are still out and about at 8pm?

Love the food displays in Japan. The food comes out looking almost exactly like the display.

Vending machines everywhere!

Someone loves their Prius enough to buy it expensive BBS wheels.

Finally reached Coco Curry!!

The clientele in many restaurants in Japan consists mainly of men who come in and eat by themselves. I am sure there are restaurants that also cater to families, but there just seems to be so many restaurants that cater to male diners who are here by themselves.

So tired…

Yup, just as good as we remembered it! Too bad we couldn’t enjoy finishing our meal here. PL started to lose it halfway during our meal and we had to pack up the leftovers to finish at our hotel.

They’ve got a whole shelf of manga at Coco Curry. I see several of the patrons reading them as well. What a life, eat delicious curry and read free manga. If I lived in Japan and read Japanese, I’d probably be here often to do just that.

Interesting architecture here in Japan.

Tomorrow, we will leave Japan and head over to Hong Kong. But of course, being jetlagged, our day will start in the middle of the night…probably like 5 hours from now.

To be continued at Hong Kong Day 1.