Dinosaurs, City Lights, and Saké

Yesterday we made our way our way back to Ueno where we went to the zoo a few weeks ago.  They have a dinosaur exhibit going on at the Natural Science Museum.  We decided before we went to the museum it would be a good idea to go to a park 2 train stations away so Marley could run out his wiggles from the long train ride.  Seth was the one who had found the park online the night before so Kelly assumed he knew how to get there.  Wrong!  We get off the park and she asks Seth where to go from here.  He just looks and says "I don't know, should be around here somewhere." We ended walking for almost 45 minutes, asking two people for help, and looking at Kelly's GPS on her phone before we found the park.  We were always a little cranky, tired, and hungry by the time we got to the park.

Saw a blimp while at the park!  It was of course a Japanese Snoopy for MetLife haha

After the park we found a place to eat.  From the outside it looked like the International House of Gyoza

It was then two train stations to get to the Dinosaur exhibit.  The exhibit was of dinosaurs found in Mongolia.  By this time Marley was exhausted and had no interest in seeing old dinosaur bones.  It took some convincing to get him to look around but by the end he enjoyed at least a little.

Since it was a nice night and we were already downtown we decided to stop at Shinjuku.  It is the busiest train station in the world.  Outside of the station is streets and streets of shops, restaurants, and giant lights.  We all wanted to get a sense of the night life before I left.  It actually took us almost 15 minutes from the time we got off the train to actually step foot outside the station.  Thats how big the station is and how far we had to walk.  Once we were outside it was fun to see the different stores and people.  It was late for us, 6pm, but you could tell things were just getting started in Shinjuku.  We finally found a restaurant that didnt have smoking and ordered.  I really wanted to try saké before I left so this was the night.  The food was delicious, we had chicken and some kind of spicy pork with a salad, rice, and soup.  Everything tasted excellent! Except for something brown in the soup.  I said it looked like a soaked shredded wheat cereal piece, Kelly thought it was beef tongue (that was popular on their menu), while Seth said it looked like a beaver's ear.  After each trying it we decided it was most likely tongue.

The saké was good, it was a chilled kind.  Surprisingly it reminded me of vodka but beer at the same time.  But that was a huge bottle! Seth ordered a drink for himself and wine for Kelly so this was all for me!  I could only do a few of those small glasses before I was starting to warm up and as Kelly said I was getting the "permi-smile" haha  The remainder is now in the fridge here at the house...