I meant to write this sooner....

 On Thursday October 25th, my group and I explored the Yanaka/Ueno Park area. As we left for the Sendagi station we got separated from one of our group members. Actually, throughout the whole trip our group kept getting separated, or people from other groups ended up in ours. It was kinda funny how many times it happened, and I'm not even exactly sure how it kept happening. Even so, most of us ended up together towards the end.
 When we arrived at the Sendagi station, we got lost on the way to shopping street named Yanaka Ginza. It was nice to wander around the area however. I thought that this area was a lot quieter and way less crowded compared to other parts of Tokyo, especially popular areas such as Shinjuku or Shibuya. There were some bigger stores off in distance, some conbini around, and newer some houses (which seemed to blend in with the area) but mostly older buildings seemed to be around. There were no noisy pachinko slots (that I saw) or huge game centers or high rise apartments, especially in the neighborhood areas.

 While we were walking around somehow an hour passed between leaving Waseda and finally getting to Yanaka Ginza...we weren't very good at time management! Once we finally did arrived at Yanaka Ginza, the atmosphere had changed. Suddenly there were people walking up in down the street, looking at the many various shops and restaurants. I really enjoyed this street. It was clean, nice and yummy smells of cooking food filled the air. I that there were various signs hanging above shops that read "Welcome to Yanaka" with two cats waving their hands to invite customers to walk down the street. Cats weren't only just on the signs, but were hanging out around Yanaka as well! I definitely want to come back to this area and spend more time browsing the shops. Mori Mayumi talks about community like in Yanaka in her article "The Neighborly Neighborhood of Yanaka." Although I was only there for a short time, I did get a "neighborly" sense from the area. While walking down that street I saw a group of little kids dressed up and trick-or--treating at some of the shops. That surprised me a bit, since I wasn't sure if kids actually did that here (also since it wasn't technically Halloween yet). It made me wonder if the area was close with the schools there or something.

 After Yanaka Ginza we briefly checked out two temples and then started to head towards the Yanaka cemetery. At the cemetery my group got separated so for a while it was just me and another one of my group members, a girl named Dali. It was really calm, beautiful, and peaceful there, especially since most of the other groups were either ahead or behind us. The two of us followed the stone path through the cemetery   and took not of the various types of grave markers. I wonder how old the oldest graves there are. There were also huge, amazingly beautiful trees up and down the path Some were old and worn down with weeds growing around, and others were new and shiny with fresh flowers at the base. We both agreed that there was a different feeling in the Yanaka cemetery compared to a cemetery in the United States. I was also amazed at how big the cemetery itself is.

 At the Tennoji temple, where a daibutsu is located, we meet up with some other members of our group, but were quickly separated from them again (probably because we were taking pictures). Dali and I started to walk through the Yanaka cemetery area again, which was pretty deserted expect for some workers blowing leaves around. As we headed towards the Zenshoan Temple the streets began to twist and turn; I felt like I was walking in a maze. But I really like the aspect of Tokyo. When we got to the area with the old historic wall, I noticed again how quiet the area really was. Most of the buildings in this area were houses. Some of them were a bit older looking and some of them seemed newer and had fancy cars parked in the driveways. More people were walking around this area, but it was still pretty empty. We stopped for a bit at the Zenshoan temple to look at the striking gold statue there. I have no idea why that statue is there, or how much of it is made out of gold, but it was beautiful. I haven't seen many gold statues or gold things here, real or fake, so the statue stood out there.

 After getting a bit lost, we ended up at Gokokuin where we meet up with our group again as well as some people from other groups. At Gokokuin there was a pretty cool looking gong. A friend decided he wanted to ring it, so he made an offering and rang the gong. To our disappointment, there wasn't much of a sound. We were expecting this crisp ring, but instead we got a dull thud.  Here's a picture of it:

 Next we headed to Ueno Park. It was pretty dark by the time we got there so literally we weren't able to see much. We walked a lot, trying to find the Toshogu Shrine, which we think we found but we weren't sure.  Ueno Park is pretty huge; we didn't even see half of what was there. My favorite part was probably the walkway where papers with wishes on them were hanging from string. There seemed to be a lot of people there for a Thursday night. I definitely want to go back and experience Ueno during the day time thought, and go to the zoo that is there. We also tried to go to the Kiyomizu Temple, but it was closed when we got there. We were able to find the statue of Saigo Takamori as well, which I was pretty excited about since I learned (and remembered!) a lot about his life during the samurai class I took at Earlham.

 As we were leaving Ueno Park we noticed a few homeless people setting up for the night. I've heard that Ueno had many homeless people. Compared to other large cities such as New York or Chicago, Tokyo doesn't seem to have as many homeless people. Maybe there are more than there appear to be, but it's rare to see a homeless person walking down the street or at a train station (from my experience). I really don't know much about homelessness here in Japan or how it is viewed (though it probably has a negative image). I wonder what sort of support organizations are available. I'm also curious as to why Ueno is a gathering place for homeless people. Is it just because Ueno is a park, or is there some other reason?

 From Ueno we headed to Ameya Yokocho, an area with bright lights and many shops. My one friend said it reminded him of a Chinatown. Ameya Yokocho runs along the tracks at Ueno Station, which I thought was pretty cool. I wonder about the history behind Ameya, and for how long shops have been along the station. At Ameya our hodgepodge group decided to have a snack somewhere. First we stopped into one shop, but decided we didn't want to eat there, so we left. It was a bit awkward, but we all wanted to go to the Mister Donut next door (I'm not really sure why we went into the first store...haha). At Mister Donut the five of us squeezed into two small tables and chatted while we ate our donuts. We had a nice group bonding time, and I learned a lot about two of my original group members. Although the day was long and we walked a lot, I had a lot of fun on at Yanaka and Ueno!