Ginza, Ueno, & Seeing an Old Friend

So yesterday we began more exploring of Tokyo. First we decided to head into Ginza which is basically the very posh, upscale area of Tokyo. They weren't kidding. This town is REALLY into name brand stuff and luxury and general. I have never seen so many Louis Vuitton stores in my life. There's more here than I remember seeing in Paris and I have already counted 6 locations I've passed just in Tokyo! It's a very fancy which is a good way to describe Tokyoites which I'll explain more about that later. But overall: Tokyo has cool stuff, like really cool stuff. They have awesome design and aesthetics and everything is really unique but also expensive. Example: I found the coolest tea towels. Random, I know but even little things like tea towels are awesome here and super unique and $40. Needless to say, I'm not getting any tea towels for our kitchen.

Anyways, the main reason we went to Ginza was because we were on the search for a restaurant called Sakata. Our Lonely Planet book said if you were going to eat out at one restaurant the entire time you were in Tokyo, this was the place to go. At this point, we have mastered Tokyo's insanely huge and complicated public transit system but now it was time to use our Atlas! Tokyo's streets are designed really odd like they are in Seoul and so it is literally impossible to find anything with an address. You really should just walk around and hope to run into things because no one knows where any streets are and they aren't labeled! The few Japanese people we found that spoke English were amazed when they saw our Atlas because even they are in the dark with city streets. Anyways, we looked around for this restaurant for over an hour and no one, not even locals using our Atlas could find the place. Finally we found the location but decided the restaurant must have shut down. Sakata: FAIL!

At this point we were starving so we found a random restaurant with picture menus (since really no one speaks English well) that ended up being pretty tasty! We both got yummy bento
boxes!

From there we went to the Taito area, specifically Ueno Park. Will found a few sneaker stores and so he was a happy boy. This area is weird because it looks like an outdoor market. Half of the merchandise is on racks that litter the alleys and so it looks like everything would be cheap but of course, since we're in Tokyo, they're not. It looks like a cheap market except the backpacks are name brand and $150 and shoes are in the $200 range. It's totally weird. We did find some good deals though and a fun little present for our friends back in VA. *let the suspense begin*

Afterward we walked over to Ueno Park. It's a really beautiful huge park in the middle of Tokyo similar to Central Park in NYC. It's huge and has museums inside, a zoo, a temple, and is just beautiful! On the left is a picture of a temple in the park and on the right is a picture of us in front of all the lily pads. It's actually pretty cool because in the park, there's a HUGE lake that is covered in lily pads and there's tons of beautiful water lilies with koi swimming around.

In the evening, we met an old friend of Will's for dinner. His name is Isaac and they were friends in elementary school. Isaac (who is Japanese) now lives in Tokyo with his wife and so he's been an awesome resource to us as we've planned our trip. Isaac is super detail oriented like Will and has given us amazing directions & suggestions and even booked tickets for us for a fight we wanted to watch! Anyways, we met him, his wife Melissa, and their Japanese friend Ai for dinner. Dinner was yummy although there were a couple weird things we tried like animal intestine (still not sure what animal) and some type of eel jelly. We had a great time with them which is why we were at the restaurant for 4 hours!!

Here are some random things we learned about Japan from our Japanese friends:

1. The Japanese rarely climb Mt. Fuji (which we are going to do), but Ai highly recommends the theme park at the base which are planning on hitting up.
2. There is little crime in Japan and murders are EXTREMELY rare although there are about 35,000 suicides every year. Yikes!
3. Tokyo is seriously expensive and no, they don't make a ton of money to compensate. They just deal with it.
4. Tokyoites are obsessed with labels and specifically quality. If you want to buy a cantaloupe, there's a huge range. There will be one that is $6 that you'd take home for yourself. Then there will be another cantaloupe that is over $100. It costs more because it is perfectly ripe, perfectly round, and without blemish. You'd never buy this for yourself but you'd take it to someone as a gift!!!! This explains the $65 Durian I saw!
5. Even though things are expensive, Tokyo is a totally cash based economy. Few places accept credit and because of this, few people are in debt. That's one plus side!