There was a light rain falling when we got off the train, but that didn't stop us from walking through the park. Our first stop was at the Kiyomizu Kannon-do temple that was modeled after a temple in Kyoto where couples wishing to conceive a child go to leave offerings.
From there we wound through the park, stopping to see other temples and Buddhas. The most interesting was the Toshogu Shrine which was built in 1651 in honor of the emperor who moved the capital city from Kyoto to Tokyo. The pathway to the shrine is lined with fifty copper lanterns donated by the feudal lords from all over Japan. Also in this shrine is a memorial to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the atomic bombs were dropped, a man from Tokyo went to check on the remains of his uncle's house in Hiroshima. The house was still smoldering from the aftermath of the bombings, and he carried a flame from the devastated house back with him to Tokyo. The man kept the flame burning his entire life and it is now housed in a dove memorial as a reminder of the dangers of nuclear warfare and a plea to the world to discontinue the use of atomic weapons.
We spent the majority of our day in the Ueno Zoo, which I think is about twice the size
of Philadelphia. The zoo was founded in 1882 and is Japan's largest zoo. Kevin and I
were amazed at the variety of animals -- all of the major players -- but also panda bears,
American buffalo, seals and sea lions and the largest collection of exotic birds that we
had ever seen. Both the gorillas and the monkeys had small babies. It was interesting
to watch the interaction between the babies and parents.
On our way into the zoo, we saw a small store that had an automated machine for making panda cakes. The machine squirted the batter into individual baking molds which then went down a conveyor to the baking area. Once they were fully cooked, they circled back around and were flipped out into a bin where people packaged them for sale. We stopped and bought a bag to bring back to the U.S. with us.
Since we spent about twice as long in the zoo as we had originally planned, Kevin and I decided to skip lunch. I figured it would take us about an hour to find a place where we could actually order something and have a clue what we were eating. We passed an ice cream stand in the park so we had ice cream in place of lunch. If any of you have followed my travels, you know that I have managed to find ice cream in almost every country to which I traveled. The ordering process was a bit different. You purchased a ticket at a vending machine and then brought it to the counter where they fulfilled your order. Thankfully, I was able to point to the things we wanted on the menu and the woman at the counter was able to tell us which number tickets to purchase.
We finished our day at the National Museum of Nature and Science. Most of the displays were in Japanese so we were basically just looking at things. There was a special exhibit that talked about the structural differences in the skulls of Samurai and townspeople from the Edo Period. I found it to be a bit creepy, like a sort of modern day eugenics interpretation. There was also a great interactive science exhibit that we stumbled upon. We could conduct the experiments, but we couldn't read the explanations of why things worked. In the final gallery we had time to see, we did find a lunar lander, lathe and World War II Japanese Zero fighter aircraft.
Thankfully, we were able to find our way back to the train station and made it back to Robin's apartment without incident. We had Robin's only key so we promised that we would be back by eight. Since there wasn't time to stop for something to eat, we braved the grocery store on our own and picked up some pasta and sauce to make for dinner. I know it's not very Japanese, but by that time jet lag had caught up with me and I didn't have the energy to put thought into dinner.
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