12 March Ueno Park

We stayed local today taking the bus along to Ueno Park.

In Japan cherry blossom is a big thing. The only problem is that anything on the pink colour spectrum that is blossoming is being photographed by everyone in the hope that it's cherry blossom! Sometimes it is, but mostly it's plum!

There's even manhole covers depicting the blossom.

At Ueno Park they're gearing up for the Cherry Blossom festival starting this weekend. Stalls were being constructed, posters advising against making fires or laying out blankets for 'banquets'! It's certainly big business.

There's a substantial zoo which you can access for about £3. It used to have pandas until China took them back at the beginning of the year.

Entry to the zoo means you can also see one of the oldest pagodas in the area - built in 1639. The zoo was built around it!

There's also the occasional tea house in the grounds.

Is this cherry blossom?

Or perhaps this is? I'm sure that we must've seen the actual thing at least once on this trip. Not what we'd expected though as the season is usually more towards the end of March but with the warmer weather it's uncharacteristically blossoming in the earlier part of March. So a bit of a surprise for us as visiting in Cherry Blossom season is peak season for visiting Japan and we'd planned our dates to avoid it!

My first Pokémon manhole cover!!

Well, only one more whole day in Japan so tomorrow we will be packing in anything we've missed as well as making time for shopping 😁.