A great day.

Two weeks ago I went to Ueno Park. Tokyo has so many amazing parks; this park is huge and has a zoo, tons of museums and a nice, big lake. I spent the day there with my buddy Adam. We wanted to go the Zoo, but somehow the location of the entrance continued to elude us, which mostly had to do with the fact that we couldn’t read the Japanese maps. I came to the conclusion that the only way into the Zoo must be by apparation (Harry Potter style). We could tell the Zoo was there and that it was quite large. We could hear animal sounds, mostly birdcalls, and we could even see cages through the vegetation, but alas we could not find a way inside. As we muttered to ourselves one last time, “how the heck do you get into this blasted zoo!?” a passing Japanese man barked in a loud monotone, “on the monorail!” Well geez, now where do we find the monorail? Forget it. It was closing in thirty minutes anyway.


We desperately wanted to feel as if we had accomplished something during our time in the park. Rather impulsively, we rented a swan-shaped boat for a mere 700 yen ($7) and paddled around a big lake lined with cherry trees. It was the most hilarious thirty minutes of my week. We had to pedal with our feet, as if riding a bike. It was very tiring and we weren’t very good at steering the thing so we almost rammed a few swans-full of disgruntled Japanese people. I was quite tempted to pretend we were in bumper cars.

After our thirty-minute swan ride, we strolled along a lane filled with vendors selling delightfully strange foods. I don’t know what it was called but we ordered a pile of Japanese pancake, egg, meat, vegetables, and sauce. It was just too delicious. We stood in the middle of the crowded lane and devoured the plate with our chopsticks in two minutes. Then we ate meat on a stick that was definitely an animal part I had never eaten before—I’m guessing some kind of internal organ, perhaps heart? We also considered buying a skewer of whole squid, meaning tentacles, head, and all. After imagining biting into that plush round head with the little squid eyes we ran away disgusted (and feeling bad for the cute little squid).

We also ate many delectable Japanese pastries, such as pancakes in the shape of fish filled with chocolate. I ate an entire banana on a stick covered in chocolate. You can imagine how good that was.

In the evening we wandered the park, admiring what seemed like miles and miles of cherry blossoms and gawking at the staggering numbers of people out drinking and picnicking on a weeknight. I've never seen anything like it. People of all ages, young and old. Grandmas, men in business suits, families. No one would do this back home, except maybe teenagers. But I can totally understand why they do it here. The cherry blossoms really are gorgeous at night. Please to see for yourself: