With Monday promising more rain, we have a dry Saturday with cooler temperatures and a hot Sunday with lots of heat to choose from, with two major activities to check off our list: Ueno Zoo and Shibuya. We pick Ueno for today, as the zoo is outside and it’ll be harder to hide from the extreme heat returning Sunday.
Ueno is quite close to where we are staying, so we head there early and line up for our park tickets. $6 Canadian per adult, and the kids are free – no complaints on the cost, compared to the two Disney parks we’ve visited this week!
The first thing we see through the gates is panda this, panda that, pandas here, pandas there. We head to the West Garden to line up to see Xiao Xiao, the male panda. The line is long, but moving. All uncovered, all outside, all hot. Everyone has an umbrella for the sun, and fans to cool themselves down, including us. After 30 minutes of stomping in line, with impatient screaming toddlers and babies all around, we are finally in front of Xiao Xiao’s glass, and … nothing. Where is he? Oh, a few steps further, and is that fur? Is that white fur I see? A few steps more, and I see the shape of a back, but he’s sleeping, hidden from view behind his water feature.
After the hot wait, we needed a snack, and right opposite the Xiao Xiao was a snack stand. We split some fried chicken and fries, as well as a melon shaved ice. I think shaved ice is my new favourite thing, it is so refreshing when you are overheating 24/7 (and no, it’s not just me)! Our table was right outside what was labeled “pond” on our zoo map, but we saw no water, only these. Lotus?
Despite the heat, we really enjoyed seeing all the animals today, but by the end of the day, we were all pretty exhausted. Here are some of the animal highlights:
Then suddenly, Maylin’s energy was nearing zero, and she gets loud. At least we get a bit of a warning? So hurry to the exit, hurry through the park, hurry choose a place for lunch! We literally jump into the first place that looks like it has both tables for 4 people, as well as air conditioning. It turns out to be a Chinese restaurant, which is ok because we know we all can find food we like, and we sit down for a relaxing lunch. This restaurant in particular even serves two Peking Duck pancakes per order, so we get a little taste of that as well.
Across from Ueno park is a street called Ameyoko. It’s an alley lined with all sorts of foods, snacks and treats. Maylin spots tanghulu, a popular treat consisting of fruits on a skewer, candied. Simple but rock hard sugar coats plump grapes, and I see the appeal! The fruit is juicy and the coating is crunchy, a perfect mix, even if grapes were maybe too sweet a fruit for my liking. Joe finally finds his new backpack after over a week of looking, and we continue down the alley. Just when we thought we could walk no longer in the heat, we feel air conditioning hit our legs, and LOOK! A GAME STATION! If you read about yesterday’s adventures, you know exactly what Game Stations are, and this is what we did next:
Exhausted but satisfied, we return to the AirBnb with the goal to head out for dinner later. We return to the Ichiran ramen restaurant from (I think) our second night in town, when we did not have the time or the patience to wait 45 minutes for a table. Tonight, we walk straight in (or rather, down a steep set of narrow stairs). The first thing we do, is place our order at the machine. There’s not much variation on the menu of these places that specialize in a dish, just do you want ramen, yes or no. So we place our order, deciding to share two bowls of ramen, and a couple of soft drinks. Then we miss the part where we customize our ramen, so Joe hurries back to fill out the pen and paper forms per bowl. A server meets us at the front of the line as soon as a table large enough for our group has opened up, and takes our little order tickets from us to hand to the kitchen, along with customization forms. In return we get buzzers that will vibrate when our order is ready. Things move quickly in this little restaurant, and so it doesn’t take long for our ramen to be ready. The four of us share the two large bowls of ramen, and this is a world different from the ramen we had earlier in our stay. The broth is mind blowingly good! Of course the entire experience, start to finish, is too quick for me to remember to take pictures, but the girls and I visit the washroom on our way out, and I have to say, this is my kind of stockpiling toilet paper!
Two bowls of ramen divided between the four of us fill us only about half way up, so we decided to take a walk through the touristy alleys of Asakusa while we are in the area. We aim for the Taiyaki window, which we saw earlier in the week, and order two with red bean filling, and two with custard. Taiyakis are waffle batter shaped like fish, with generous filling inside, maybe too generous. We all agreed we would want a little more waffle and a little less filling, to even out the sweetness.
This is our latest stroll after dark in this area, and we enjoy seeing how busy it gets with locals and tourists during the different times of day. We discover a cat we hadn’t noticed before, and of course get a fully lit SkyTree and Golden Poop as a reward.
