Daytrip to Tokyo

On Monday morning, Michel and I hopped on a train to Ueno for a day in Tokyo. We first stopped at Ameyoko - the market street at Ueno station - so I could get some lentils, cardamom, black mustard seed, basmati rice (cheaper than Japanese rice, and of course much better when cooking Indian dals), and some tea.

Here's the market - it's generally much more crowded than this. I like the crowds, but it's much easier to shop on a day like this:

We met Alex in Shibuya and after stopping at the Mac store so I could get some stuff, we hopped on a train and went to this awesome burger shop over in Kichijoji - now my new favorite area of Tokyo. The name of the restaurant was Village Vanguard, and here's the burger I ate (the one thing they don't get right here in Japan, in my opinion, is the bacon - I love it crispy and dark. Here's it's more like just some fatty slices of smoked ham):

We left to head to the park and on our way saw this sign. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have seen this kind of racism in Japan. It seems to be perfectly acceptable in Japan to portray black people in this way (as the continued popularity of "Little Black Sambo" (complete with similar illustrations) in book stores here shows):

We got to the park. And...

...saw a duck,

...got some desserts in an Asian cafe,


...and chatted and brought Alex up to date on all the happenings at Utsunomiya school (Alex, on the left, is the emergency teacher who I replaced).

Next, we walked around the park for a bit. We all tried the macro setting on our cameras. This was the result I got:

Here's a small shrine in the park. At least I think it was a shrine....Michel?

Here's a blues singer we met in the park and listened to for a while. He was pretty awesome and had some cool, Elvis-esque moves:


All in all, it was a great day. Loads of fun, but exhausting.