Day 3 - Even more Tokyo

This was a bit of a grey, old day.  We set out on the subway to visit the Ueno ward, which has quite a few museums and a large park, with zoo, etc.  First stop was the National Museum.  This was actually made up of 4 or 5 different buildings with different themes, but we were struck overall by the high ratio of building/floorspace to number of exhibits.  Oh, the exhibits were very interesting, it's just that there didn't seem to be that many artifacts on display, given that we were in the National Museum.  Still there were some really interesting things from both the early AD era as well as the strikingly advanced Edo era, which I think was kind of around the 1700s (would have to click on my wikipedia shortcut to be sure, but I'm currently under-caffeinated).  The swords from the 16-1700s were particularly impressive...amazing workmanship and in pristine condition.  They really put European artifacts from that period to shame, at least, in my limited memory window.  Some of the older artifacts were just plain strange, but i guess the shogun/samurai warrier stylistic ideas were around for some time...

The National Museum (part 1 of 4-5)

The Japanese were pioneers in rubbing their bellies while patting their heads.

Cool, eh?  This was from the early ADs.  To some, this would prove that the Earth has been visited by extra-terrestrials.  To others, those people are still idiots.

Samurai Groucho Marx.

After strolling several of the museums and enjoying a Japanese lunch we sauntered through Ueno Park taking in some of the other buildings, statues and temples.

The Natural History museum complete with Blue Whale.

Love those Temple roofs.

This Temple had it all...water station, prayer lines and a place to hang pieces of wood marked with prayers... 

Rack for hopes and dreams

Detail - lots of different languages and art on display.

One corner of Ueno Park is a big pond half-filled with Lotus plants.  In the midst of the Loti is a charming temple.

The pond temple, with some crazy American in the foreground.

Cats, too, are drawn to places of quiet and reflection, and where there are fish in the pond.

The Loti.

A well-adorned Buddha.  Some draw the line at 4 red bibs, but it's really a matter of personal taste.

The temple lute statue.

 At this point we got caught in a heavy rain shower and ducked into a coffee shop.  Between downpours we made another run for it and made our way to the subway station, but were distracted by a pachinko palace along the way.  Given the weather, it seemed like the right time to tick this item off the "to do" list.  We entered The Palace and approached one of the hosts who guided us to the basement, indicating that the machines on the first floor were too high level for us.  We were handed an instructional pamphlet each, and sat down at our own machines.  The pamphlet wasn't really helpful, mainly offering advice on how to feed money into the machine.  I did this and apparently purchased 1000 ball-bearings.  There was a knob that gave me some kind of control over how fast the balls would should out of an opening at the top, but then they tumbled, gravity-driven over a series of pins until they settled in the bottom and disappeared, or entered one of a few gates on the way down.  The significance of these gates was obscure, but sometimes a ball would enter a gate, possibly not long after another ball had entered another gate, or something, and then a new game would start on the video display portion of the machine.  When this game came on, I was encouraged to rapidly tap on a big button on the front of the machine, which I did, as rapidly as possible.  I'm still unclear as to whether maximum rapidity was the goal, or if there was some element of finesse expected because the video portion of the game was sort of like a slot machine with three wheels, and the button tapping seemed to possibly have some influence over the spinning, or possibly braking, of one or more of the wheels, or perhaps something else.  While interacting with the game in this way, I was subjected to the most incessant and intense assault on my visual and auditory senses as I've ever encountered.  There was not a surface in the room that wasn't either itself flashing some off-the-chart neon colour or reflecting such a colour.  The relentless clacking of the ball bearings on the pegs was frequently drowned out by the video game noises, but those occurred in bursts so the effect was similar to the American method of persuading enemy combatants to share information by exposing them to irregular bursts death metal at loud volume...but instead of having a hood over our heads, it was more like clockwork orange, with the unavoidability of the visual stimulation replacing the little speculums for holding open the eyes.  Surprisingly, none of us had any seizures and in the end, it appeared that I had lost most, but possibly not all, my money.  They rang Carolyn's and my cash-out cards through together, so it was hard to say.  Carolyn said that at one point her machine did something that seemed good, and possibly was a "win", so we're guessing that she at least recovered some money, if she didn't actually win.  In the cash-out process, you get some cash back, but then some of the credits you've "earned" they force you to spend on horrible gadgets and penny-candy.  I think this may be because gambling is not strictly legal in Japan, so paying you off in garbage is a way of skirting this restriction.   On the way out of The Palace I noticed a "refreshment" booth which I gathered you could pump money into and you would get sprayed down with febreeze while your hair was tousled but, as intrigued as I was, I skipped that.
The bustling streets of the brightly lit shopping arcade that we emerged onto, and the thinning post-rush hour crowds on the subway now seemed quite serene by comparison with The Palace, so it's possible that therein lies the appeal.  If that's not it, then it was lost on me...I suppose there could be some illegal narcotic that might make the experience enjoyable, but not sure what it would be...