1 post tagged “ueno”
Well, no cleaning fish yet—it was raining all last weekend so the trip got postponed. It’s starting to cool off here so the hot springs are looking better and better. Instead of going to hot springs I did some more shopping in Omiya Station and found a nice winter coat.
This week was pretty normal, except that I took the slightly wrong train home for the first time since I arrived in Japan, so it caught me off-guard. I was riding the train home in the evening, and everybody in my car got off at one of the big stations along the way, not very unusual for the evening ride home. Except when I looked around, I realized I was the only one on the train, and I foolishly thought hey cool. I was walking up and down the train, reveling in the emptiness, when the conductor found me and told me I couldn’t be there. (Actually, he held his forearms up in an ‘x’, the Japanese gesture for ‘no’ or ‘bad’, and I eventually got the idea that something was wrong.) He asked me which station I was trying to get to and then told me that this train wouldn’t be going to that station. I wanted to say, but it always went there before! but couldn’t figure out how to articulate that in my limited Japanese. Anyway, the conductor man was nice enough to show me to the next platform over where I caught the right train. It’ll probably be the first of many times.
This weekend was the third three-day weekend in the last four weeks, and since I didn’t have anything else to do, I took a train to Ueno (a district of Tokyo) to have a look around. It’s not difficult to get there, and I’ll probably explore Ueno more fully in the coming weeks, but I did manage to find Ueno Park. Aside from a few carnival rides I’m (unfortunately) too big to ride on, there was also a nice fountain, with a handful of cats wandering around. I also found some nice view of Ueno from the park, so I’ve added those pictures to the Photos category. I’ll have to save the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the historical museum for a future trip.
I’m also discovering that the upside to living in a place where I can’t possibly fit in is that I don’t worry so much about what people will think of me. For example, I decided to invest in a bike helmet despite the fact that no one here wears bike helmets, except small children. The store only sold children’s helmets of course, but luckily I have a small head so it fits just fine, although it is slightly embarrassing to have ‘Kids’ written across the back of the helmet. I rode my bike to the grocery store the other day and I saw a woman looking back and forth between me and her small child, who was, coincidentally, wearing the same helmet I have. It was all highly amusing. Anyway, I’ll get weird looks no matter what I do, and at least this way, my precious brain is safe.
