Today I hopped on the Ginza line to Shimbashi where I got off and hopped on the Yurikamome over to Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo bay that went through a period of development in the 90s. Its home to a gaggle of malls, some parks, and its own (albeit much smaller) statue of liberty apparently given to Japan by France back in 2000. The day was rainy and Odaiba isn’t really that interesting but the views you get off the Yurikamome made the trip worth while.
After that I made my way to the Yamanote line and hopped off at Ueno to explore Ueno Park. Ueno is a huge park contains a couple of temples, a number of museums, a zoo, and a ton of homeless people. Homeless in Japan are definitely different that what we see back in the US. There is no panhandling from what I have seen and they are apparently permitted to build sometimes intricate shelters using the ubiquitous blue tarp. All their stuff is usually neat and squared away.
For dinner we went out to a yakiniku restaurant where I tried beef tongue for the first time. It was thinly sliced and a bit chewy but quite good. Afterwards Teman and I hit another super-dinky bar (seating capacity - maybe 8) that had a rasta-theme - dub music, lots of pictures of reggae stars on the wall. One decoration really stood out - it was a mini-mural painted across a number of skateboard decks of a number of black gentleman, including one who looked a bit like ice cube driving a low rider through (on closer investigation) a river, another who at first glance looked like he was skateboarding but given that it was apparently a river must have been surfing I guess. Written in the middle was the expression “Do the recommended thing”. Strange.