Here Comes the Sun. Saturday October 7

Finally a day off! I fell asleep to the sound of pounding wind and rained, but woke to the surprise of a beautiful, sunny day. How lucky! I had a lot of plans to see different parts of Tokyo, and I was afraid that it would be a terrible day for sightseeing.

We had to decide how to spend this day. It was a hard choice. There are so many things that I want to see and do in Japan. Some people left Tokyo to go to see other famous places like Hiroshima or Kyoto.

In the end I decided to stay in the city to see some of the wonderful sights here. I spent the day with Linda, a teacher from Dallas, Texas. We are very compatible touring partners with interest in seeing the same things. We took the Metro to Ueno Park, an area with many museums and a great place for a walk on a busy Saturday.

We were surprised to see homeless people living in tents and sleeping on the ground. We knew there were poor people in Tokyo, but we hadn't seen any before. It was good to see that there were volunteers serving food to the hungry people.

Our walk in Ueno Park also took us past the Zoo and an interesting amusement park for young children. It would have been enjoyable to stop at the zoo, but we didn't have enough time to do everything there was to do at the park.

What we really wanted to do was go to the Tokyo National Museum. This is a large museum with different galleries in different beautiful buildings.

We had a great time seeing art and artifacts from different times and different places in Japan. We especially like seeing the beautiful Kimonos and paintings.

We stayed for several hours and then ate a snack under the shade of an apple tree full of apples. Linda warned me that it looked like a big juicy apple was going to fall on my head. Fortunately, no one got hurt.

Our next stop was another museum, but that is a story for another blog.