Some more of Tokyo

It has been sometime since I have walked this much! If only I had my step counter with me. I reckon I have done at least 20000 steps today and it would have been waaaaaay more yesterday. Today was a 'free' day to do as we pleased. Everyone split up and went their seperate ways today. This groups is lovely but they are very much here to do their own thing and it is strange not to be forming close bonds with the others, even my roommate.
Anyway, today I went to the zoo. It was probably the most depressing zoo I have ever been to. The animals are kept in very small areas that really are not big enough for them. The signs are also misleading - Monkey Mountain sounds glorious and majestic. It isn't. It is a series of concrete floored cages. There is a mountain but it is also a concrete structure and there is no leafy things to break it up. The monkeys all looked sad. It was the same with the lion, the bears, the elephants.
The zoo is set into the middle of a park though again, there is a distinct lack of green spaces. Today there was extra stuff on too. Apparently it is the Emperor's birthday today and a public holiday which explains the busy factor on a Sunday. At the park they had a small series of markets selling food - the fish was something I was not quite up to attempting but I I did enjoy the kumara cut up into wedges. The odd thing was that they sold the kumara with three options; with salt, plain, or with sugar. Sugar??? Just beyond the food stalls was a stage and a bunch of dancers that were performing a sort of J-pop style. Lots of mash-up music and small Japanese girls smiling and waving.
From there I headed about to see what else was in the park. It is HUGE. There are several museums and a pond which in the summer is full of lotus flowers but in the winter was full of dead sticks that were once lotus flowers. There was also a temple up near the zoo which was stunning with a main path bordered by rows of stone laterns. Inside was a really interesting site. It is the home of the flame of the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. The story goes that a man went to see the damage left by the bomb and see if his uncle had survived. He found the building still burning with the flames if the nuclear fire. The man took the flame home with him and kept it alight for many, many years. The flame still burns just outside the temple now and has become a symbol of peace and a reminder of the devestation caused by nuclear weapons.
From Ueno park I went to the shopping market and bought my secret santa gift. . The streets of Tokyo are incredibly busy and the people walk with purpose. I managed about an hr then headed back to the hotel for a rest before heading back out for a show.
The show was great but I almost missed it when I got there at 6pm and it started at 6.20 and I didn't have a ticket. I was lucky there was still a standing space to watch the show. I was slightly annoyed however that I had said I was coming and they said to meet at 6pm and they had bought tickets at 5.45pm and gone inside. I didn't have wifi so had to go back down into the subway with free wifi to message them.
I wasn't sure what to expect but it turned out to be quite funny from what I understood. It was basically about a blind man who is getting robbed by a thief. They strike up a converstation and the blind man makes the thief feel sorry and changes his ways and even gives the blind man money. Turns out the blind man is greedy and has hordes of gold stashed in his house which we don't find out about until the end, after the thief leaves. It was all in Japanese and Andrew, who was sharing his translator with me, dropped it about half way through so I had to muddle through with the way they spoke, not what was said.
I tried to go back down after the show to get a ticket for the second scene but it was sold out so I left the others who had a ticket for it already and headed back to the hotel where I stopped at a small Japanese restaurant and at ramen (I had to pick a picture and hope for the best) and another white horse (of which I still haven't looked up what exactly it is).