Asakusa, Ueno park and Shitamachi Museum

Yesterday we got up early and walked down to Asakusa, which is about 20-25 minutes away. The heat here is dire, hopefully it will cool down soon. Thankfully there are millions of drinks vending machines everywhere because we're drinking so much to keep hydrated.

Firstly we went to the temple. The whole area is really peaceful and quiet and there are lots of little shrines everywhere.

Then we walked down this street, through this big gate. There are loads of little shops lining the street selling sweets and souvenirs. Everything was tempting but we held off for now, but we'll probably indulge ourselves today.

Then we wandered to a little museum showing traditional Japanese crafting tools, but there weren't any signs in English so we didn't get that much out of it.

We then walked down to Sumida park on the riverside, but that wasn't very nice so we took the subway to Ueno park. Ueno is much bigger and busier than Asakusa, there are lots of fast food places, shops, kareoke bars etc. The park is pretty big, and has loads of museums in it. We walked around a bit and found this shrine down some stairs through red gates. It was very pretty and peaceful

After sitting down in the shade a bit to recover, we headed to a museum in the park that our guide book recommended, showing the way of life in the early 20th century. When we got there there was an English-speaking tour going on with some Australians, so we got to listen in. It was a very small building, but had a recreation of the typical housing block at the time.

Upstairs had a collection of traditional Japanese toys, which was fun. The guide came over to us when we were sitting and asked us where we were from. Apparently he has been to Edinburgh lots for business. He gave us a guide of our area and some leaflets for similar museums around Tokyo, and when we were leaving the women at the desk stopped us and gave us a little origami spinning top and box as a present. I don't know why but it was really nice.

After this we just headed back to our hotel and collapsed, because we were still tired from the journey and walking in the heat was finishing us off. Out room has really good air conditioning, thankfully. We ended up just sleeping through the night. It's now 6.45 am and after writing this up we'll be heading out again. There is a shop on the way to the station that sells ready-made food including sandwiches, but yesterday I tried what I thought was a vegetarian rice ball thing, only to eat half of it and find that there were tiny baby fish in it, so I'm a bit put off. There is a McDonalds at the train station too, as well as a KFC and TGI Fridays in Ueno, so we'll always have something.

I think today we'll be heading to Ueno park again and trying out the zoo, Tokyo National Museum and the Science Museum. Tonight if we can stay up later we might head into a busy area and look for somewhere nice to eat.

Here are some more pictures of around Ueno park to finish off.