Friday, January 16, 2015

Ueno Park (With the Zoo! and Toshogu Shrine!)


A couple weekends ago, we ventured out to Ueno Park.  Ueno Park is a huge park in Tokyo that has a zoo and many shrines and museums.  You could really spend a few days there exploring everything that the park has to offer.  When we went though, we decided to have a picnic at the park and then check out the zoo and the Toshogu Shrine.


The Ueno Zoo was so much fun!!!  It's Japan's oldest zoo and it's awesome, and so affordable!  It's only ¥600 for adults, and kids 12 and under are free!  The zoo's big attraction are their two panda bears, and we had so much fun seeing them--they were so cute!




Inside the zoo is also a pagoda that used to be part of an ancient temple.  



The polar bears were also a huge hit--they other visitors to the zoo were freaking out over this guy!  He was pretty fun to watch though :)


And, then there was Peter's favorite of the day, the secretary bird.  This thing is so creepy!


They had tons of animals, and we actually didn't even make it through the entire zoo!  We'll be going back for sure.  After we left the zoo, we walked over through to the Toshogu Shrine, which was really beautiful with its stone lanterns leading up to it and gold-plated architecture.




Next time we go back to Ueno Park, I want to be sure to visit the National Science Museum and let the kids take a few ¥100 rides at the small amusement park outside the gates to the zoo!  Oh, and in April to see the cherry blossoms!  There will be definitely be an Ueno Park follow-up post in the next few months :)

Ueno Park is super easy to get to by train--just get off at the JR Ueno Station!  But, if you're driving the GPS Coordinates are:
35.714396, 139.772613

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