Day 2 : History lessons

After an early night sleep the previous day(having not slept properly for the past 40 hours or so), we were fully recharged for the day ahead. We were 'excited' about welcoming our final travelling partner for this day as well, as balex would be joining us from his 'adopted' country, Canada. These were a couple of pics of the sceneries i saw from my hotel room.The plan for the day was pretty simple and casual. Fred n i were to visit Tokyo National Museum, located at Ueno(上野). Bfast was onigiri (japanese riceball) for fred, while i bought chicken sushi from 7-11. We took advantage of the fact that we were still undergrads, as we got a subsidy for the entrance ticket into the museum. Below is Honkan, probably the main gallery of all the historic artifacts.
We had also made a boo-boo, to enter this building first, thinking that it was a museum as well. In fact, this is Hyokeikan, a place where educational programs n special exhibitions were held. Not many 'historic artifacts' inside, just staff who would introduce some elements of japanese culture, like how the folding screens were used by Japanese.
Having done research beforehand, we had specially planned to visit this museum on a thursday, as the Horyuji Treasures Gallery was supposed to be opened ONLY on thursdays, and only if the weather was good. The gallery housed artifacts from Horyuji Temple, situated in Nara(another part of Japan), which we would be visiting in the following days as well.
Didn't take many pictures for this tour of the museum, as we didn't understand most of the artifacts anyway... Moreover, i'm not really a pro-history person.. We spent the whole morning/noon viewing the artifacts in the museums(sorry for the lack of pictures), which included exhibitions of buddhism in japan, courtly art, zen and ink painting, tea ceremony, military attire, folding screen paintings, calligraphy, kabuki..etc. You can probably find whatever that was related to Japanese history in these museums. Some were even listed as 'National Treasure', which i suppose it's highly respected by the Japanese. There was a thing which i didn't understand though, the blades used by the warriors/generals. They looked very similar, and i couldnt differentiate among them.

This is the Kuromon, aka 'The Black Gate'. It's regarded as an 'Important Cultural Property', though again, I don't really know the significance of it.. It's probably a gate used by many royal families in the past.
Lunch was again, a quick one, pizza outside the entrance of Ueno Zoo. Tokyo National Museum is located in Ueno Park, which also has many other museums, and the zoo too. We walked around the park(which was HUGE), and came across this 'walkway'.. Seemed like the common scenery u see in typical Japanese dramas.. with the trees by the side.. Would be superbly beautiful if it was the sakura blooming season.
We walked around Ueno, did some window shopping, while waiting for the call from balex. He finally called us, n we made our way to Shinjuku station to meet up with him. As mentioned b4, Shinjuku's station was really huge, and to meet someone there wasnt an easy task. Fortunately, after a quite lengthy call with balex, we managed to meet up with him, and we brought him to our hotel to leave his baggage there.

It was around 8 when we finally got back to the hotel, and we had to abandon the initial plan to travel to other parts of Tokyo for dinner. Instead, we walked around Shinjuku to look for a 'decent' place for dinner. We settled at this place, commonly termed as Izakaya(居酒屋). It's where businessmen usually chill out after a day of hard work, let their hair down, smoke, and drink.
Our dinner for that night..
I'm not sure if all the food were 'traditional' Japanese food, coz some looked like Chinese cuisine to me. Anyway, we were served by a Chinese, who looked like a Japanese. In fact, the izakaya had quite a number of Chinese working in it. Initially, we were taken aback, coz it's the first time we met a Chinese for that 2 days. The whole place felt very 'sleazy' too, n we had to take an elevator to the 4th floor(i think) for our meal. Luckily, nothin 'evil' happened. We had a satisfying meal, and left the place unscathed.