Tokyo - Day 6

I bet you thought I was never going to get back to our trip to the Mainland...

Day 6. The thing we realized about Tokyo is that there is SO much to do, that making the decision on what to see is half the battle. Since we had seen some royal landmarks and some important historical goodies, we decided to venture out a bit.

We took the subway (have I mentioned how much I love the public transportation system in Tokyo yet?) up to Ueno Zoo. I consider myself a bit of a zoo snob (thank you Jack Hannah and The Columbus Zoo), and since living in Asia have decided it is best to put all of my expectations aside and just see how it goes.

The Ueno Zoo is inside a larger park complex. As we approached it we assume that at some point there MUST have been a Panda here, because there were statues of Panda all over the place. Here (however) is the sign at the gate where be bought tickets...

The girls were happy as clams with the fake plastic panda to sit on.

And now we digress. There is really nothing more funny in Japan as the signage - so please excuse my random photos of signage at the zoo.

We spotted this one outside of a monkey cage. I assume it is telling us not to feed the monkey because he will then get sick... ??

Here is Alessandra outside of the tiger enclosure - he was pretty close there.

Again...more  signage...

Comparing ourselves to gorilla statues.

And, mom's everywhere - taking the kids to the zoo for the day.

A group of school children - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the matching hats. You see this all over Okinawa also, matching colors.

I have to say I didn't know these guys existed.

Don't pull a rope of the flamingo's might escape.

This was my favorite. There were these trees hanging over the walkway from the sloth enclosure - apparently the sloth's would go into those trees? And poop would fall on you? hmmm

And then we found this giraffe. He was causing quite a stir as he was eating leaves out of the rhino's enclosure next to his.

Olivia imitating his large tongue.

Thank you, I will be sure not to stick my finger in the sharp teeth of this animal.

After lots of walking at the zoo and park, Alessandra passed out on the way to our next destination.

The Shibuya Intersection
The Shibuya intersection is supposedly one of the busiest intersections in the world. We decided we had to see it for ourselves.

An awake Alessandra getting a "tall American" view

Olivia's vantage point

AND, you didn't think I could talk about this little place without video did you?
You are in luck!!

All in all, the video really didn't do it justice. We walked across the street 3 or 4 times - never getting bumped or anything. Really incredible that THAT many people can be in one place at one time and not run into one another.

On our way back, I caught a photo of the map of the subway system. Talk about an enormous system - amazing.