Day 1: Yanaka, Ueno, Akihabara

Today is my first full day in Japan! Yesterday I arrived at 2 PM but was knocked out by 6 PM, which was actually a huge mistake since I'd meant to stay up until at least midnight LOL. I ended up sleeping roughly 12 hours and waking up at 6 AM which is pretty problematic considering my sleep schedule is supposed to have me going to bed around 6 AM so I guess today I'll be up 24 hours!

After my long slumber, I woke up feeling pretty awful, probably due to jet lag and also dehydration since I hadn't anticipated going to sleep in the first place.

Following a little bit of time feeling sorry for myself I got up and went to the convenience store to get some snacks and coffee. Since I went to Family Mart yesterday, I decided to go to the 7/11 and get Melon Pan (a personal favorite), sorry that I forgot to take pictures.

I wanted to do one of the walks from a book I had bought previously, "Tokyo Walks: See the City Like A Local", and chose the shortest one. However, that still happened to be 4.8 miles (7.5 kilometers).

I confidently rode the train to my first destination of the day and then promptly realized how hard it was to follow directions from a book with a small map. Eventually I figured it out and ended up at the Suwa-jinja Shrine.

Interestingly (to me at least), the stairs next to the shrine are apparently a sort of historical landmark so they have their own listing on Google Maps and naturally, associated reviews. This is my favorite:

I also took pictures of this historical landmark, so please enjoy.

The route begins in Yanaka, which to me appears to be a more historical part of the city with lots of shrines and cemeteries and things like that. The next place I actually took pictures was another temple, the Yofukuji temple.

It had this cool gate, pictured below, which according to the city's website about the temple is called a Niōmon.

It also had these cool statues, but I don't know anything about them!

In what started to appear to be a bid to visit every temple and/or shrine in the greater Yanaka area, I soon arrived at another temple. This time I found myself at the Kyōōji Buddhist temple. It appeared to be the largest temple I had visited yet and had an attached cemetery, seen below.

For the next hour or so, I forgot to take pictures so take the following events with a grain of salt since you can't verify I did or did not do any of it anyway. From the temple, I walked to the Yanaka Cemetery which absolutely dwarfed the one inside Kyōōji. Inside, there were also the foundation stones of an old five-story pagoda. The foundation stones and a plaque are the only thing remaining to let you know that a pagoda ever stood there. However, the plaque is chilling as you might imagine since the Wikipedia article about the tower is titled "Yanaka five-storied pagoda double-suicide arson case".

After leaving, I walked to the Yanaka Ginza shopping street and looked around a bit but didn't get anything. I was pretty hungry by then since it was a bit after noon but most of the food places along this street were small and full at the time (I didn't look all that hard though TBH). Word on the street is that the entrance stairs to this particular shopping street is well known for having good views of the sunset, too bad I didn't come later in the day! Also, what's up with these stairs also having a Google Maps entry??

I then walked down a winding road / back alley called Hebimichi (Snake Road) that was quiet and had a nice atmosphere. As an aside, it was really nice how quiet the side streets and back alleys were. One minute you'd be in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo on a main street, but if you ducked into a random alley or street, all the noise would die down and there would just be a few pedestrians and cyclists here or there.

Finally after all of my hard work, I made it to my next destination. You guessed it, another shrine! The Nezu Shrine to be specific.

This was by far the busiest of the places I had been to yet, and I had actually begun to wonder if there was a holiday or something (there isn't as far as I am aware). Lots of shops were set up and tons of people were hanging out. On my way out, I realized that people were probably here to see all of the flowers since it looks like spring really is in full bloom (pun intended)!

At this point, I was getting a little tuckered out but still determined to prove to this book that it wouldn't defeat me with it's shortest walk. So, I proceeded towards Ueno Park.

Fortunately, after leaving the busy shrine it was more quiet alleys.

Finally, I arrived at Ueno park and was greeted by more stairs. Exhausted, I considered getting a taxi and just calling it a day, but alas I persevered and climbed up the stairs. In a stroke of luck, it appears that these stairs are unnamed so I actually might be allowed to name them. Let me know if you have any suggestions. Please keep in mind that the Torii gate at the foot of the stairs is already named, however.

Luckily, it was all worth it because the park's Ueno Toshugu Peony Garden was open. Apparently, this attraction is only open twice a year for roughly a month each time during the time in which the peonies are in full bloom (citation needed), so I got lucky. The flowers were nice and it was a relaxing slow shuffle throw this part of the park after my early brisk antics.

I also saw some sort of film crew filming the flowers (??)

I hope they got the footage they were looking for. After all of that walking and being awkward while wondering if it was OK to pass around the film people, I had seriously worked up an appetite. I stopped at a cafe in the center of the park called EVERYONEs CAFE (capitalization intentional), and was able to do the first part of the conversation without immediately forgetting everything ("nanmei sama desuka" → "hitori desu", them asking how many guests there are and then me saying just that I'm eating alone). But then, the waitress threw a curve ball at me. She asked if I wanted to eat inside or outside, which I understood but didn't have a preference for, and didn't know how to indicate as such. I doubt she would have let me not indicate a preference even if I did know how to do so, so I just chose outside after I waited long enough to make her repeat herself LOL

Anyway, after I was seated a nice menu with pictures was brought to me and I decided to have Souffle pancakes since IDK where I could even get them outside of Japan.

I'm not really a food critic so I will just say I thought they were good and I ate everything like I usually do. They were a bit pricey though and I think it's likely it's a bit of a tourist trap considering it's directly in the center of the park. Most of the customers appeared to be foreign tourists but I did see a number of tables order in Japanese (but they could still be foreign tourists!). Another CRAZY thing about this restaurant is that it had a restroom with BOTH paper towels AND a trash can. Truly a rare thing when I remember my trip back in 2018. Usually I'd expect either a hand air dryer or nothing at all (I remember having to carry handkerchiefs around for this purpose on my previous trip) and definitely no trash can

I wanted to visit the National Museum of Nature and Science or Tokyo National Museum but both were closed today, so that's on me for not planning anything. The science museum was particularly appealing to me and interestingly, is shaped like an airplane when viewed from above, which is really cool. Apparently, it is also the most visited museum in Japan (at least in 2020 when the stat on the Wikipedia is from).

Since it was closed, I had to make due with admiring this giant whale outside.

After all of this, I considered that it was probably time to go home.

But then, I realized I was only like 1 kilometer away from Akihabara, the otaku paradise. Why not just pop in for a little bit??

I don't really have any pictures from this time but basically I spent like 2 hrs going to various shops and looking around. I stopped myself from playing any crane games since I probably don't need any more anime figures but I did try one capsule machine and managed to get the character I wanted on the first try! I also bought a combo CD / DVD for an idol band I like (??? hard to explain this one since in general not a fan of the idol genre lol One of the idols in this group, 22/7, is an American from LA and has a pretty funny YouTube channel). Anyway here's my haul for today:

I actually didn't even realize I would be in Akihabara today, so I will probably go back at least one more time in the next month.

Anyway, it was a pretty full day. According to my Google Maps location history (thanks Google!), I walked roughly 10.4km today. However, that seems to have not counted my loops and aimless wandering towards the end of the day.

For reference here is what the route I had intended to take looks like, so I think I did a pretty good job!

My Fitbit also disagrees with the above and is convinced that I did over 11 miles. Since the Fitbit is always on and activity data is random pings (and when you are actively navigating I guess), Fitbit might be more accurate? Who knows? Well Google knows since it has access to both datasets but you know...

Well now that I've had such a full day and all, it's time to go to bed!!

Just kidding, time to work a full 8 hour workday from 8PM to 4AM!!!! LET'S GO!