Day 3: Ueno, TOKYO

FamilyMart brunch

We decided to take the day easy and stay near our hotel because we were so exhausted and sore from a jam-packed two days in Kyoto. All the walking really took a hit on us so we slept in a bit. When we got hungry, we decided to get breakfast at the nearby FamilyMart and I went a little crazy with buying snacks.

While we were hallway through eating in our hotel, the room cleaning service came by so we finished our meal in the lobby. We also caught our first Farfetch’d on Pokemon Go! Since we wanted to give the hotel time to make our bed and change the sheets, we started walking around Ueno for a bit. We actually headed to Ueno Park but called it quite pretty fast because it was hot and we were wearing our sneakers. On our way back to the hotel, we stumbled across Ameyoko shopping street and couldn’t resist.

Ameyoko Shopping Street

There were plenty of shops to walk through and we even dropped by a Mastumoto Kiyoshi to grab some menthol patches for our calves. Most importantly, I saw our first Sailor Moon gashapon at a toy store called Yamashiroya.

On our way back to the hotel we also saw a sign for Seria in the Ueno Marui department store so we went in and bought some souvenirs. Seria is seriously one of the highest quality dollar stores (actually 100yen) I’ve ever been to. I wish these existed in the US!

We also dropped by Uniqlo to check out the sale they were having for golden week! The cashier we met there had probably the best English we’d heard so far. After this, we headed back to our hotel room to rest for a bit now that it was cleaned.

Ueno Park

After we rested up, we decided to explore Ueno Park more and along the way, we saw a Lotteria bakery and decided to drop by because of the panda pastries. The sakura bean paste was surprisingly delicious.

We wandered around Ueno Park which was surprisingly huge because we didn’t look it up beforehand. Apparently there is a zoo there too and that explained the panda designs everywhere including on the pastries.

Eventually, we found street food stalls and tried a skewer of some part of a chicken–maybe tongue–and we enjoyed the smells.

The line of food stalls eventually led us to the Shinobazunoike Bentendou temple as well as beautiful views of Shinobazu Pond. We spent a while just walking around the pond until after the sunset. There were a few stalls with trinkets and other random accessories along the way. Once it was dark and we finished taking pictures, we decided to head out for some curry!

Coco Curry House

I wanted to try this chain just because I had heard about it. When we got there, we noticed a bookshelf of laminated manga as well as menus with anime idol characters all over them. I guess we know which crowd they tend to cater to?

Don Quijote

We went to the Don Quijote in Ueno and mainly looked at some of the weirder items in the store as well as all the character goods. There were horse masks and wooden penis keychains…