Ren's Footprints

Yesterday, local members of my school's international department took us Californians on some tours around Tokyo. I was in the group that went to Asakusa and Ueno (both are districts of Tokyo).
We began at a train station where we all met before going on our various tours. The first picture is of an outdoor smoking section that has become quite common in Tokyo. I am pretty sure smoking on sidewalks has been criminalized to there are special designated places. I've even seen special smoking patrols by people who look like police.

Some of the buildings surrounding the train station look like this:

The signs on the buildings vary from pachinko casinos to student loans to karaoke to arcades.

Here's a fellow Californian buying a train ticket with help from one of the locals:

My group took a train to a ferry depot and then took a ferry to Asakusa (we could have taken a train but this was better). I chatted a bunch with a new classmate of mine named Yoshiko as we rode the ferry and saw some cool sights including Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge (not very colorful though), Tokyo Dome, and some of the skyscrapers.

Asakusa was quite busy being that this is a 3 day holiday and people come from all over Japan and Asia to see this place. We mainly spent our time checking out street vendors and the shrine.

Then in Ueno we just checked out more street vendors and saw a little of Ueno park.

We all met up again where we originally met and headed to a restaurant where we were being treated to a drinking social. Here we are ordering food on the LCD touch screen:

Toasting (the two Japanese girls on the right are locals):

And that's how the day went! I think I am being taken to Ikea today, but we'll see. See ya later!

Oh ya, I met a girl that went to high school in Japan less than a mile away from where I did!