On my second day in Tokyo in rained all day so I decided to go to see some museums. I headed to Ueno where most of the major museums and the zoo are. I went to the Tokyo National Museum Main Hall and the Hyokei-kan which had a special exhibit on national treasures from the Yakushi-ji Temple. The special exhibit was very popular I had to wait an hour in line to see it. It was like being at Disneyland. The exhibit was cool but it really wasn't worth the wait,it has some cool Buddha statues and some pieces of an ancient pagoda along with other artifacts. The main hall was great it showed art and artifacts in historical order starting from some pieces that were over 5000 years old all the way to modern ones. The coolest parts for me were the samurai armor and swords. I decided to check into a business hotel for my last night in Tokyo, I needed to organize my bag and I was also tired of only having communal space. I found a hotel about 200 feet from the capsule hotel that was owned by the same company. It had a really good Internet special, I paid $70 and it included high speed Internet,it was nice.
My last day in Tokyo I went back to Ueno to see the things that I didn't have time to do the first day and the outdoor ones that I couldn't do in the rain. The first thing I did was to walk Ueno Park which has a great lake with lily pads and other Asian water plants growing all over it. There is also a paddle boat rental and many other gardens and fountains. Then I went and got some sushi, I was lucky enough to find what ended up being a great place. It was a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where all the pastel are the same price and you grab the plates you want off the belt and they go around the guys who are making them and you sit in a big circle around them. I have eaten at this style of sushi restaurant in hong Kong too. I choose this one because it was crowded with lots of locals,always a good sign. When I was eating I was lucky enough to have a professor from a local university sit down next to me. He was originally from the U.S. And has been living in Tokyo for 8 years. He said this was the best Sushi place in Ueno and the best for the price in all of Tokyo. He also told me of a dollar store to visit,which I thought was strange but he was very convincing so I eventually checked it out since it was right next to my train station to the airport.
The thing I really wanted to see was the five story pagoda, a pagoda is an ancient Japanese style building.Pictured above. I also need to mention that I hate zoo's, I think there horrible prisons for animals, I would personally rather be dead than spend my entire life in a cage and I think that animals feel the same way so I try to never support them. I don't ave a problem with wildlife parks or places where animals have a large area to roam,which some zoo's provide but very few and never Asian zoo's,there the worst! Having said that I really wanted to see the five story pagoda and after having walked around the zoo for an hour I realized that it was only possible to see it from inside the zoo so I reluctantly paid $6 to enter so I could see it....
After the zoo I went to the National Museum of Western Art,it only had one floor open but it had a lot of great pieces there was one wall of Monet's,there must have been a dozen of them. It was an impressive collection for it's size. The rest of the museum was being renovated until 2009. After this I only had about half an hour until I needed to head to the train station to get my train for Narita Airport which is 75 minutes away so I checked out the 100yen(dollar) store the professor was talking about. It really was quite impressive,it was big but I have seen bigger but the quality of the things you could get for dollar was unbelievable. You could even get 12aa batteries for a dollar or really nice laptop sleeves or camera cases and much more. I was impressed the professor was right....
I then got on my train to Narita,my flight left at 8:30pm and arrived in Sydney at 7:20am with a 1 hour time change so it was just under 10 hours. Narita airport had a free yahoo sponsored Internet cafe and a lot of shops but only a few restaurants. The Sydney airport sucks, I had to pay $5 to get to the domestic terminal from the international and there is very little to do here and the wireless site wont even let me pay for Internet,I'm not impressed. My flight leaves at 3:20,so I have a very long layover. I was at least able to plug in my laptop at the kiosk style coffee shop and have been able to watch some TV programs I downloaded and type this blog...Once you go past security there is more places to eat and it's not bad,the only problem is Jetstar wouldn't let me check in until 2 hours before my flight departed,but there dirt cheap so I still think they are a great airline!
I finally got to Cairns after a 3-4 flight. My hostel, the Dreamtime Hostel picked me up for free at the airport,there employees are very friendly and so are the people who are staying here,its nice but I need to crash because I start my SCUBA certification class at 8:30am tomorrow. Cairns weather is great its hot enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt at night....
