6 May 2010
Ueno Park, Musems and Zoo.
First of all, London museums are far better than Tokyo museums, at least the ones I went to in Tokyo so far one of which is supposed to be the biggest and fanciest.
The other thing is that Tokyo museums are not free, in London they all are.
There is however a book you can buy for about $20 that has vouchers for all museums and various other attractions in Tokyo (including the zoo). It is called the Grutt book, Good for Rouond Tokyo Ticket of Museum, I have purchased this, I have yet to read it but theres over 60 things it gets you into.
First up was the Tokyo National Museum, which is apparently the biggest and the best. It was pretty dissapointing with most of it closed down or roped off, the gardens over grown with weeds and the large pond area looked in complete disrepair and you werent actually allowed outside to look at it. The exhibits themselves were calligraphy scrolls, swords (which were the best bit), samurai outfits, kimonos and pottery.
Next, and only a few hundred metres away, was the Ueno Zoo. This was not too bad, most of the enclosures were dated and it was of a similar size to the Adelaide zoo, but since after buying the Grutt book it was free, its pretty decent value, and has a monorail. See below for a few pictures, I tried to not bore everyone with 100 monkey photos.
Final museum of the day was the Science museum, theres a few of these in Tokyo, this one is more of a natural history museum. This was the best part of the day, and had the most amazing cinema thing I have ever seen. You get shut into a pitch black room standing on a glass walkway, inside a fairly large sphere. The movie is then projected on every part of the sphere at once, this is a far more convincing 3d effect than anything I have ever seen. There were 2 movies, one about dinosaurs which had some fairly crap graphics but girls were screaming as dinosaurs ran past, and then one of the history of the universe that had amazing graphics. I was dodging meteors as they flew past.
The rest of this museum was pretty good as well, pretty much all the signs are Japanese only, and unless you are prepared to walk up and more importantly down stairwells you wouldnt realise it goes 3 floors underground and that theres a roof herb garden with a great view.
My feet are now in a terrible state, Im going to have to google for ancient oriental treatments, perhaps I need to go to a foot restoration clinic, I see them advertised a lot in dark alleys.
This mornings coffee was from Tully's near yoyogi station. I have no idea if Tully's is a brand imported from elsewhere or not, but the coffee was fine. The weird triangle scone thing however was so stale I think it was baked some time prior to world war 2.
There seemed to be a large number of guys in suits in this place who were set up for the day, with laptops, newspapers, pen, paper, phones etc. all on the tiny coffee table.
Most of you would know that Japan has space age tehnological toilets, the one in my hotel has 3 buttons that do various things to you, this one in the coffee shop however has an LCD and a lot more buttons. None of which flush the toilet, I stood looking afraid to press any of them, but then the toilet flushed itself and the lid went down. Crisis averted.
The main building of the Tokyo National Museum, note the crappy grounds, to the right is a new cheap looking pre formed concrete building thats yet to open. To the left are some other cheap buildings that are mostly closed off and empty.
The pond in Ueno park. This was pretty dissapointing as well, lots of it was full of weeds. The Adelaide botanic gardens is far nicer. There are however interesting homeless people sleeping in Ueno park, apprently they are quite famous as there was a decision to evict them but Tokyo people protested to let them stay. Or maybe I have that confused with another park.
The entrance to the zoo. Its been my life long dream to see a giant panda. I have travelled half way across the world instead of 1.5km from my house (Adelaide also has pandas).
Oh no! The pandas are all dead. Zoos closed, panda died.
Actually I knew that before going, but judging by the number of very apologetic signs all over the panda themed zoo, most people do not know the pandas are all dead before arriving.
There are however 2 polar bears, the enclosure seems a bit crappy for them, not as nice as the seaworld enclosure on the Gold Coast which I also visited, the pictures should be on this site somewhere.
The elephant enclosure is too small. It is a little surprising that just a piece of wire keeps them in, If I was that elephant I would just walk out, dragging all the wire and poles holding the wire up with me.
Have you ever had ice cream from a vending machine? I have.
Heres proof of ice cream eating, the only reason I had an ice cream is because there was a machine offering one. Theres no way I would have one normally.
Which doesnt explain why I had a crappy hot dog, because that came from a kiosk and was as good as it looks (terrible). By the way, in Tokyo you can have a hot dog with or without bread. If you are on the atkins diet you can get just the saussage on a stick, and people still run a line of ketchup and mustard along the saussage. I think you need the bread to disguise the horrible taste of the saussage myself.
I like a monorail, one of the best features of this zoo is that it has a monorail, which I rode on. How do you get a job as monorail driver?
Last zoo photos, I have seen penguins in Australian zoos, and they are football sized, and good for kicking. These penguins however are nearly as tall as me!
The inside of the science museum. the displays are all of a high quality like this. The sphere movie theatre I described above has signs everywhere saying no photos, so I didnt take one sorry!
I found out what happened to the pandas from the nearby zoo when they died.
Surprisingly little effort was put into mounting this blue whale. The nose is literally holding it up on the concrete. Its like it was on some sort of other stand and fell off.