Ueno Park

After my first paid lesson (it's not cash in hand through the Foreign Instructor Centre, I give them my bank details and they pay me by transfer at the beginning of each month for the lessons I taught the previous month), I headed up to Ueno park on the Yamanote line.

I wasn't intending to do much, just have a wander round through the park and to the pond.



There were lots of street performers around.


I wasn't going to go to the zoo there, because I knew it would be the same as any other zoo in the world, but then I saw that entry was only Y600 (£3) so I thought, what the hey.

I apologise for the crazy amounts of animal photos that will follow, if you're not interested, skip to the chunk of the writing at the bottom.

The first section I got to was the pheasant enclosure.

What an enormous bird!!

Then it was giant panda time!

There were random Japanese things spread throughout the zoo grounds, but, as Jennifer very nicely pointed out, this is actually a Thai-style roof.
You can't really tell, but this owl was staring right at me, it actually followed my movements with its scarily huge orange eyes.

Eagles.

These vultures were huge!
A tea house.
Lions!! There were actually only lionesses that walked around in circles.

These monkeys were so loud! You could hear them from anywhere in the zoo.
Colourful bright birds.

I don't think this place was actually cold enough for the animals there.

The only way to get to the pagoda was to go into the zoo. If there was blossom on this tree, it would have been an amazing photo.

It stopped doing it as soon as I took the photo, but this bison followed me as I walked past, and it was really quite big!

Shinobazu pond with the Ueno skyline behind.

Shy porcupines...
What a great name!
These random little furry mammals were in the nocturnal house, and did some very cute things that the camera couldn't pick up. If only one could have fitted in my pocket.

Another shy animal.
I've heard people say hippos are massive creatures, but I never really understood how big they actually are. This one is a pygmy.
That's a full-sized one.
Big rhino, pity about the thick bars in the way.

This ostrich was hilarious.
What a name! I love how the Japanese translation is 'Cape Penguin'.


I'm sure I've seen this on a postcard.

Don't forget that you're in the middle of Tokyo!

Then I had probably the most surreal experience of my life.

I was looking at the map to try to figure out how to get back to the station when a Japanese homeless man came up behind me and started trying to guess where I was from. At first he thought I was German, but then reeled off at least ten English cities before I said Birmingham.
Instead of saying "oh, great football team", he said "Oh! Near where Shakespeare was born!" His English was native-level and he had an odd accent, like a blend of Indian and Scottish.

He then started talking about how Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays himself and must have bought them from other writers. I thought, oh here we go.

He then introduced himself as an author and poet, and I thought, oh here we go even more!
He produced a couple of books from his bag written by Hideo Asano, claiming he wrote them, and also gave me a book of haiku he said he'd written, which I gave him Y150 for.

An example of one is:
Birds fly to their nests
Do you know where you're going?
Light years to come home

Now I don't know if any of this is true, but he definitely spoke with the philosophical style of a poet, his speech was full of similes and metaphors. He was really interesting just to listen to. His English was flawless. I found a couple of other blogs that mention him, here's one, and the other. I also stumbled upon an article from Japan Probe that links to other blogs by people who have met him, and it even links to Hideo Asano's own blog and website too!

He said he'd lived in Europe and sold books, but then became homeless in Tokyo because no one respects artists in Japan.

He asked me what the difference between moles and meerkats was, which I could answer, and then between crows and ravens, which I had more difficulty with.

He seemed incredibly intelligent, and knew that Birmingham was the second largest city in England. No one knows that! Not even half the people who live there.

He was Japanese but had grey-blue eyes, like Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha.

We spoke for over half an hour, me saying several times "Well, I better be off. Good luck!" but him saying "Yes, okay", then continuing speaking.

I was a bit alarmed at the amount of personal information he wrote in his diary at the end of the conversation (he said he writes down the names of everyone he speaks to) but then I thought, how much damage can he do with my first name, age, hometown and the fact that I'm living in Japan teaching English? Not a lot really.

I left with a kind of odd philosophical view on events. He kept asking me if there was any way someone could survive without money, and I had to keep saying I didn't know. He was so cheerful and had such a positive outlook on life, it really made me think.