3 November 2015
Still alive
Spending the day at Ameyoko in Ueno
Rumors of my death due to man flu have been slightly exaggerated, instead I remain alive, but near death, at least for the time being.
Today is also a national holiday, for culture day, which apparently is a more recent invention of celebrating the emperors birthday by having art competitions and giving people the day off.
I suspect the timing of it being culture day and not emperors birthday is to do with world war 2, however the emperor still hands out an award to whoever has advanced culture the most in the last year. This could be by artwork, science, research or apparently, moon landing.
The most famous awarding of the culture day prize was to the Apollo 11 astronauts for preventing further nuking of Japan by beating Russia to the moon.
I split my day into a couple of smaller outings to the local area, interspersed with sneezing fits, and laying face down on my rock hard bed.
This tactic proved beneficial, I certainly feel better than yesterday when I got off the plane. Thats enough about my illnesses, except to say I feel as though I have urinated a regular number of times today. I will keep updating this figure should anything change.
This is the outside of my hotel, complete with noisy highway overpass out the front, and a mass of various elevated train lines out the back.
Somehow my room is silent.
Todays sky, shockingly blue. The temperature is too warm for pants, I had to change into shorts. I felt conspicuous as no Japanese person will ever wear shorts even on a 40 degree day.
I saw some other tourists in shorts though. Theres a lot of tourists here around Ueno.
My breakfast was a cinnabon/bun whatever you want to call it. The most calorifically dense product known to mankind.
Small boss man insisted on a public shoulder rub to start the morning off. This shows passers by you are a man who deserves respect, despite your near midget size.
At this time of day, it is very quiet. Despite having been here on previous trips, I have never really explored past the main station street. There are lots of closed off pedestrian style streets.
The only real signs of life were the lines outside of every pachinko parlour waiting for the 10AM open. You cant even win money on these things, yet still they insist on losing all their money watching metal balls fall into holes. If you are lucky you might get a free shoulder massage whilst you urinate (yes, thats a real thing that happens in these places).
Theres actually no smog today, I can see mountains on the horizon. However I suspect this sign is one store upset with the smoke next door produces as it appears to be an Izakaya barbecue place.
Random shot of impressively sized Pachinko Parlour. They are everywhere around the Ueno station
The Ueno park is large, and features many museums, a zoo famous for having only dead pandas, and this lake that has been over taken by noxious lillies.
Some people are setting up tripods to take photos of the lillies wilting.
There was also the rare sighting of a pigeon to photograph.
And also delicious carp. They seem to enjoy resting just out of the water.
Another dead panda in Ueno.
Still before lunch and the place is now completely packed out. I came back a bit later to find lunch but everywhere had long lines.
A familiar story for me on my various overseas adventures.
To keep hunger at bay, I settled for pineapple on a stick, which was actually great. The jar it came out of was enormous.
And then some time later, I settled on a ham salad roll for lunch, with a small piece of cake. Its actually real ham too, not just 'ham taste'.
Also, at the time of writing, ham definitely gives you cancer, the world health organisation confirmed.
NASA also confirmed that the Antarctic ice shelf is growing, and they have no idea why.
Despite all this, the roll was delicious, so crispy the bread cut the inside of my mouth. Now I am tasting blood.
So its actually bread that will kill us all, not ham or global warming.