Tokyo has far too many other human beings in it for my taste. Give me moss covered temples and abandoned shrines over a megalopolis any day of the week.

However, today I got to see a real Masamune blade. That made this part of the trip worth it. Unfortunately, I was looking through the pictures I took at the Tokyo National Museum today, and many of them are probably a bit out of focus. My camera has this problem that, when the flash isn:t used, quality goes down. I:m not really sure how to fix this, and there were signs all over the place indicating that we couldn:t use flash photography in the museum. Anyway, it was worth seeing regardless. The rest of their sword collection was quite wonderful, as was the naginata they had.

I also accidently stumpled onto a massive cherry blossom viewing party. I have pictures of that that I will upload when I can. Wow. I mean, I can see why they make special outings for it. It was windy today, and the blossoms fell like a light snow. Anyway, the main throughfare of the park near the museum is flanked by cherry trees. Today, underneath all the trees, the people had laid down tarps and were having picnics. It:s a pretty big event. They had even brought out tables!

My Lonely Planet guidebook has been wrong on two things that slightly screwed me up. (1) There is no Virtual Reality gaming center in the Sony Building, much to my dismay. It was probably a temporary exhibition. And, (2), the free guides for Asakusa leave at 2 PM, not 3PM, as my book stated. Arrive at 2:10, and you:ll just miss them.

It turns out that wasn:t such a bad thing; the area got on my nerves pretty quickly. There:s a huge Shinto shrine in Asakusa. That:s one of the main attractions of the area. But, there were sooo many people there. . It really was kind of annoying, especially since not two days ago I was trekking through Shinto shrines in near silence. And, it being a city, not a few blocks from the Shrine was an :adult entertainment: shop (and they don:t censor their ads here, even ads on the street. Or at least, not censor in the way that the US thinks of it.) Is nothing sacred? *sigh* The whole atmosphere: jostling the crowds, the fact that in between the entry Torii and the shrine itself was a street filled with souvenier shops, the seedy places not 5 minutes walk away.... To me, it definitely did not feel like any sort of sacred ground.

Anyway, i:ll try to find a real internet bar soon to upload some pictures. I:ll be going to see the monkeys tommorrow or the next day. I need to make some lodging reservations for the last few days of the trip soon. Eep, less than a week left.