Japan April 2012 - Day 9 Ueno Park / Akihabara

We woke up early again today hoping to get a headstart on the crowd going to Ueno Park for the Sakura viewing. I heard the park has millions of visitors a year, the bulk of which come during Sakura season. The 8000+ Sakura trees in the park probably have something to do with that =D.

Crowd before the actual Sakura path entrance

Big Sakura trees

Path lined with Sakura trees

Hanami

Lanterns strung along the trees

Well, the Japanese are early-wakers as well as we found out. Quite a few tourists too. Quite a crowd here, impossible to take photos without a random stranger appearing in the photo, kinda like Kiyomizu at Kyoto. But the trees here are bigger and had brighter colours than any we're seen so far. You will get peace of mind as you walk along the path. It's all very serene and peaceful even with the crowd. It helps that there's no pushing or shouting unlike Chinatown in Singapore during CNY.

Tori gate

Inari statue

Buddhist Shrine

Fortune cat lucky charms

Actual one

Sake Vendor

Overzealous photographer

Hanami is all about eating and drinking

Ueno Park has shrines and museums. The Ueno Zoo is also just next to the park. Pity about it being closed while we were there though. The Buddhist Shrine sells some fortune cat lucky charms, though i'm not superstitious, it makes a great souvenir.

Ueno Zoo mascot

Ueno's Ameyayokocho Black Market

Long queue at this stall

Red bean paste pancake

Seafood Stall

Fruit Stall

You can spend a whole day at Ueno. The so called Ameyayokocho Black Market sells almost anything from food to clothing. There are some famous restaurants there too. We went in search of a famous Unagi restaurant.

Noboritei

Cheapest set lol -I'm not a fan of Unagi

Normal set

Well, this is it. Noboritei in Ueno. I'm actually not a fan coz there's a lot of bones in the eel. I don't like the texture of eel meat as well. The sauce's good though.

As evening approached we went to Akihabara to look around and visit the Gundam Cafe. Turned out to be a let down as the duty free malls there were very ordinary. Tons of arcardes and maid cafes but that wasn;t very interesting. The Gundam Cafe's menu wasn't special either although the interior design was all Gundam. We ended up having dinner at Shinjuku, a Western-Japanese restaurant reminiscent of Ma Maison.