Tokyo!

Better late than never, right?

I'm all about opportunities. A few weeks ago, Benny went to Yokosuka (an hour outside of Tokyo) for three days of Navy work stuff. Seizing this opportunity, we both took Friday off of work and spend the weekend together in Tokyo.

The weather was cool and damp. Our first day in Tokyo was raining, but I didn't mind. I only wish I would have packed my rain boots.
Michelle at Ueno park with her umbrella (yeah), but no polka dot rainboots (boo hoo).

We spent the afternoon at Ueno Park, one of my favorite places in Tokyo. I have never been to New York City, but Ueno Park is what I picture Central Park to be in NYC. It is this huge park in Tokyo and once you are walking around inside the park you forget that you are visiting a city of 12 million people. It's green, quiet and peaceful. In the spring, it's THE PLACE to visit for the cherry blossoms.

Ueno Park is home to several national museums, including the museum of science and nature. We went to this one and luckily for us, it was open late on Friday nights.
The dinosaur in the poster was actually a swimming dinosaur that paleontologists found in Japan. Scott and Luke would have loved this place.

Can you find Michelle in this picture with the life-size whale? No wonder Jonah could fit in the whale so easily, IT'S HUGE!

This picture is in honor of my friend Sue, similar to a picture I took of Sue with Sue the dinosaur at the Field Museum in Chicago.

This is the kind of bat that causes power outages in the middle of the night because it flys into power lines with its 3 foot wingspan.

We've always been amused with dried out astronaut food, but who would have thought they'd have Takoyaki? Oh wait, we are in Japan... nevermind.

After Ueno Park, Baby Volkmann was kicking like crazy. There are two ways to read these movements. 1) Baby Volkmann was excited to hear Daddy's voice after not hearing his laugh and jokes for five days or 2) It was hungry.

So we stopped to eat at Hard Rock Cafe Tokyo.

The Hard Rock Cafe at the Ueno train station also has lovely souveniors like keychains, at an everyday low price of 3000 yen ($30).

Normally I'm not a fan of eating at worldwide chains on vacation. I prefer the Mom and Pop places where the locals dine, but Hard Rock was all decorated for Halloween and since I'm pregnant and emotional, I need the atmosphere to avoid homesickness. Plus I really wanted to order this Spooky Burger, which was on a special Halloween menu:
Thankfully for this cheap engineer, the food was not as expensive as the souveniors. We had to wait about 2 minutes to chow down on this scary guy because all the other tourists that didn't order the spooky burger wanted a picture of ours.

We wrapped up day one by taking the subway back to our hotel and crashing. We set our alarm for early. We had a whole second day of sightseeing ahead of us.