Tokyo Summer

As an attempt to use my JR Seishun 18 pass without going anywhere too far, a friend I went to explore some places in Tokyo. Our first stop-- Ueno Park.

 This park was huge. We passed by the Ueno zoo, a temple, various museums (ie. National Science Museum, Tokyo National Museum, National Museum of Western Art, etc.), a huge pond where people rode in paddle boats/canoes/swan boats, and various street performers. We stopped to take some pictures of these giant lily pads near the large pond. I was tempted to steal one of the lily pads...

 Rodin's Gates of Hell in front of the National Museum of Western Art. So awesome.

Huge whale structure in front of the National Science Museum

Next, we hopped on the Yamanote Line and stopped at Nippori. Our friend told us there were many Edo period buildings that would be worth checking out. Maybe we weren't in the right part of the neighborhood. Every big traditional house looked like a temple. Good thing we didn't walk into a house thinking it was a temple.

We checked out some temples and saw a lot of little shops. One strange thing we noticed was that Nippori had a lot of cemeteries. A lot.

 Here's one of the cemeteries we visited. Don't know why there was a big golden statue there.
The last place we went was also a cemetery. There were so many graveyard plots and a random little park in the midst of the sea of graves.

Since we had enough of cemeteries and we couldn't find those Edo period houses, we went back to the city area. We stopped in Ikebukuro to check out Sunshine City. The streets were extremely crowded and busy, which was probably because of all the large stores and abundance of entertainment areas there. It was a bit overwhelming there, especially in the oppressive summer heat and humidity.

We met up with two other friends in Shibuya later that night, and later in the evening after downing some vodka shots in front of the convenience store, we took the train to the club Ageha in Shinkiba.

 The club had several stage areas, so it was a pretty big venue. There was also an outside area with a small pool, though nobody was allowed to enter it. What was the point of that then?
People in Japan don't really seem to dance at clubs, maybe unless you're in Roppongi (have yet to go there), so it was a bit lame at first to be the only ones actually dancing.

I went because I wanted to see the band Capsule. What I didn't know was that a lot of otaku-looking guys really like this band, so the place was swarmed with over-excited dudes. Capsule gave a good performance, though.

Tired from pulling an all-nighter, we went to Yoshinoya around 5am for some grub and head back home. Somehow we always end up at Yoshinoya at sunrise. Fun times.