Ueno, Nippori and Ginza.

We start each day with a very good flat white coffee, Australian style, at the Byron Bay Cafe, just a short walk from our hotel here in Hamamatsucho. This morning we were heading to a new part of Tokyo for us: Ueno Park, site of a number of major museums and Japan's most popular city park. Once we got there we headed first to the Asian Gallery, but fairly quickly decided we'd devote our museum energies today for a thorough look at the monumental Tokyo National Museum, just next door to the Asian Gallery.

Established in 1872 the Tokyo National Museum has a very grand entrance and beautifully crafted interiors.

We spent a couple of hours here - really enjoying the range of exhibits, but especially the Samurai paraphernalia (armour, swords, costumes etc), beautiful textiles (kimonos) and decorative arts (pottery), tea ceremony artefacts and lots of scroll paintings. There were many ancient objects too, speaking to Japan's ancient past.

I loved seeing the Netsuke collections - especially the contemporary netsuke collection belonging to Prince Takamado (who died in 2002 aged 47).

We loved this very Japanese touch outside the museum - a "locker area for umbrellas" all neatly coded and locked for visitors.

After nearly two hours looking at the collection we enjoyed a quiet matcha tea moment in the museum's outdoor cafe.

The historic gardens adjacent to the Museum are interesting too........

A large water feature .....

Historic tea houses (some of them are hundreds of years old having been moved here over the past century) .......

After our extended time at the Museum our next goal was to find Nippori Fabric Town, the famous centre of all Tokyo's sewing and craft supplies. We decided to walk there from Ueno Park -about a 30 minute walk through the quiet suburban streets of this part of town.

In this photo Rob has captured me walking through a Nippori "red light area" we think?? There were a number of small hotels with short stay rentals advertised (like one hour) and with pictures of very pretty girls on the billboards - though all very clean and neat of course being Japan.

This house looked a bit seedy - but not in THAT way however!

We found Fabric Town eventually - yay for me!

We enjoyed a late lunch together at another cute little suburban diner in Fabric Town and afterwards I spent an hour of so exploring a couple of shops (but especially Tomato Selection Kan), while Rob went for a bit of a wander. He enjoys exploring the streets of Tokyo and taking arty photos.

It was getting close to 4.00pm before we boarded the train back to Tokyo Station. Our goal was to find the wonderful sweet shop we'd discovered in Ginza back in 2016 (with Maxie) as we had a powerful urge to enjoy some high quality Daifuku for our after dinner treat tonight.

Walking south west from Tokyo Station we eventually got to the high end "high street" of this rather opulent part of Tokyo - Harumi-Dori Avenue in Ginza...... 

...... and down the avenue a block or two and there we find it - the quite unassuming but wonderful little Ginza Akebono (which has been on this same site for 63 years apparently)

People were queuing today for strawberry filled daifuku - a Spring specialty.

They were beyond scrumptious!!!! We also bought some of our fave mame daifuku mochi cakes filled with red bean paste and whole red beans.... a feast!

We walked back to our hotel from there, admiring the extravagant Ginza architecture along the way.....

This is the best (value) little hotel in Hamamatsucho.... so close to wonderful rail transport anywhere in Tokyo - so well maintained, so roomy by Tokyo standards, so clean and quiet and only $200AUD a night - it's such a great place to stay!

This is roomy by Tokyo standards(and nicely minimal)!