Japan Day 12 - Part One

So today's itinerary said "free day".
I decided it would be the day we would ride the famous Asakusa Panda Bus and 

find the equally as famous Asakusa Seiko clock which on the hour promised, 

"mechanical dolls re-enacting scenes from Asakusa's most famous festivals"...

thanks internet! 

So with my scribbled down internet notes we began our search. Asakusa is not that big but we seemed to get horribly lost. I remember from one of our night strolls through the streets, seeing the Panda bus stop sign. Re-finding that proved rather difficult. But I'm not one to give up, especially with the promise of riding on a free shuttle bus that looks like a panda...eekk. During our wondering.

We got distracted by graff, actually Ben did!

Took some happy snaps of Asakusa stuff...

and continued to go round in circles until I noticed a building all fenced off due to construction.
I kind of half joked to Ben that, that was probably the clock building, hence why we had never seen it before...and yup it was the clock building. In sheer desperation we followed the sign pointing to the temporary building down the road. I walked in and asked if the clock was still in existence. The lady looked worried and told me an English speaking lady would be in at 10.

PFFT TO HELL WITH THE DAMN CLOCK!

The panda bus was still to be found.

Minutes passed, then hours, okay maybe just minutes. I was grumpy and decided to throw it all in. Ben stealing some movie line, I'm sure, told me we weren't going to give up, next thing we're asking some helpful Japanese man who just happens to point a few metres over and in broken English tells us they are no longer in operation

PANDA BUS. NOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Such a sad sight to see them fenced up!
I figured we must still be suffering the onsen/minakami/bear curse!

I picked myself up and embarked on the next part of the day which was to travel to another place in Tokyo, called Ginza, which I had never been. I think there was a reason I'd never been there before because apart from the lack of cultural diversity there was no other reason to distinguish it from any other high class city. I wanted to go to Ginza cause

1)awesome toy shop

2)Alice in Wonderland themed cafe!

We got horribly lost again

luckily this lovely guy helped us

Despite following his directions we were still lost until, the loveliness that is Japanese society manifested itself through a lady who not only helped us not be lost but walked with us to the toy shop, just in case, lol

The toy shop was good, but I think Ueno's one is better :P

Anyhoo off to find the Alice cafe! I think i'll stop right here and say we never found it *sigh* though we did find this cute statue

and this awesomely large fat cat

and cute buses

Actually they may of been from Asakusa...anyhoo, this really cute Rabbit was definitely a Ginza find

So we never found the Alice cafe. I was really cranky by this point, sorry Ben. I suggested we head to Ueno for some park action to try and savage the day

Ahh cute boats, pikatchu, ducks, turtles and carp...helped to relieve crankiness :P

Stay tuned for part 2!