Dinosaurs!
After the do nothing day that was Friday, I resolved that we were going to do something on Saturday. So, we made an effort to get up and go, and by 9:30, we were off to Ueno Park.
Ueno Park is a big park in Tokyo that has a whole bunch of museums dropped across some lightly treed fields. We were aiming for the science museum, which had a special exhibition on dinosaurs. We bought our tickets, waited in line for fifteen minutes or so, and then went down to the subsubbasement where they keep the dinosaurs.
My main impression from the exhibit was of how crowded it was. The exhibit was mainly laid out as a seven-meter wide path that moved from room to room between display cases and models. There was enough room to move around without bumping into people, but the crowds in front of the displays were packed three or so people deep.
The displays themselves were kind of cool. There were a number of fossils that looked like a slice through a small critter's skeleton. You could see what really looked like feathers on some of the small ones. (Note to those following the devate at home: apparently it's not clear how many dinosaurs had feathers and how many had scales. Teach the controversy.) There were displays where dinosaur skeletons had been assembled, from the meter-long miniraptor to the requisite T-rex. The T-rex was kinda cool. I have no idea how much of what we saw was actual fossils and how much was manufactured, but it was cool. I've got photos of my kids against the backdrop of a wide-open dinosaur mouth.
Near the end of the display there were some sofas laid out for people to rest on. The kids were tired by then, so we sat on the sofas for fifteen minutes to give them a break. Then it was onward, up the stairs, and into... The Gift Shop!
It was a pretty cool gift shop. I bought a set of playing cards with the elements printed on them--with some Japanese descriptive text, of course. They had stuffed ceolacanths that were very cute, but we brought home a squid, an arctic fox, and some sort of wolf, instead. They had freeze-dried space food in Japanese flavors from JAXA, the Japanese space agaency. If you want your space Ebi Gratin, that's the place to go. Chris also got both butterfly and squid crafting tape.
It was well past lunchtime, so we wandered across the park towards lunch. We passed a lake filled with lotus leaves. Really, it was completely covered with them. It was a little creepy, and I was glad that the lake didn't have an outlet to the ocean. We also passed a number of buskers. If we ever get all of Smorgaschord on a world tour, we should definitely hang out in a bunch of parks and sing.
On the other side of the park, we headed towards a Japanese restaurant that Chris and the girls had eaten at on a previous trip to Ueno park. We waited a little while for a table, they seated us, and we waited. And waited. And waited. The place was busy, but we watched people being seated at tables next to us, having their orders taken, and being served while we waited. Either we fell through the cracks, or someone decided they didn't want to deal with the foreigners and just avoided us. Eventually, Chris caught a waiter's attention, and someone took our order. The food came reasonably quickly after that, and it was decent food. Given the delay, though, I wouldn't go back.
Then it was back home. Lunch was late, so we nibbled dinner from what was around, and called it a night. On behalf of Shavuot, I had a chunk of cheese for dinner and read through the Book of Ruth quietly to myself.
Ueno Park is a big park in Tokyo that has a whole bunch of museums dropped across some lightly treed fields. We were aiming for the science museum, which had a special exhibition on dinosaurs. We bought our tickets, waited in line for fifteen minutes or so, and then went down to the subsubbasement where they keep the dinosaurs.
My main impression from the exhibit was of how crowded it was. The exhibit was mainly laid out as a seven-meter wide path that moved from room to room between display cases and models. There was enough room to move around without bumping into people, but the crowds in front of the displays were packed three or so people deep.
The displays themselves were kind of cool. There were a number of fossils that looked like a slice through a small critter's skeleton. You could see what really looked like feathers on some of the small ones. (Note to those following the devate at home: apparently it's not clear how many dinosaurs had feathers and how many had scales. Teach the controversy.) There were displays where dinosaur skeletons had been assembled, from the meter-long miniraptor to the requisite T-rex. The T-rex was kinda cool. I have no idea how much of what we saw was actual fossils and how much was manufactured, but it was cool. I've got photos of my kids against the backdrop of a wide-open dinosaur mouth.
Near the end of the display there were some sofas laid out for people to rest on. The kids were tired by then, so we sat on the sofas for fifteen minutes to give them a break. Then it was onward, up the stairs, and into... The Gift Shop!
It was a pretty cool gift shop. I bought a set of playing cards with the elements printed on them--with some Japanese descriptive text, of course. They had stuffed ceolacanths that were very cute, but we brought home a squid, an arctic fox, and some sort of wolf, instead. They had freeze-dried space food in Japanese flavors from JAXA, the Japanese space agaency. If you want your space Ebi Gratin, that's the place to go. Chris also got both butterfly and squid crafting tape.
It was well past lunchtime, so we wandered across the park towards lunch. We passed a lake filled with lotus leaves. Really, it was completely covered with them. It was a little creepy, and I was glad that the lake didn't have an outlet to the ocean. We also passed a number of buskers. If we ever get all of Smorgaschord on a world tour, we should definitely hang out in a bunch of parks and sing.
On the other side of the park, we headed towards a Japanese restaurant that Chris and the girls had eaten at on a previous trip to Ueno park. We waited a little while for a table, they seated us, and we waited. And waited. And waited. The place was busy, but we watched people being seated at tables next to us, having their orders taken, and being served while we waited. Either we fell through the cracks, or someone decided they didn't want to deal with the foreigners and just avoided us. Eventually, Chris caught a waiter's attention, and someone took our order. The food came reasonably quickly after that, and it was decent food. Given the delay, though, I wouldn't go back.
Then it was back home. Lunch was late, so we nibbled dinner from what was around, and called it a night. On behalf of Shavuot, I had a chunk of cheese for dinner and read through the Book of Ruth quietly to myself.