Colour me badd.

[Tuesday, 07March, 1015hrs Tokyo]

How can we not visit the Asakusa Kannon Temple and Nakamisedori? Every single person that I've brought there never forgot the place, and never left empty handed. In fact this time round, the guys bought sooo many things, we had to take a cab back to the ryokan to deposit their loot before we set out again. But before we did that, we walked to Kappabashi, somewhere I've never been before. It's a street famous for their wax food display replicas, ever so representative of Japan. J was excited about visiting the place, because the tv programmes made the place look so lively. However when we got there, there were less than 20 people on the street and the entire place looked dreary. Oh well, maybe it's bad timing.

We walked past an enormous MOS Burger outlet and realised that their signboard is green, as opposed to the red we have in SG. Somehow, they managed to make MOS Burger look like an atas restaurant over there, and not the teenybopper fast food joint like over here. Fine burgers indeed.

Another unforgettable place is the Ameyoko Market at Ueno. My mother loved it when I brought her there - wholesale food items galore! My travel companions probably spent their entire budget here. It's always like this for first timers to Japan. They spend alot of money on shopping - for souvenirs. Only after they get back to the SG would they realise that they had spent more money on buying stuff for their family, relatives, colleagues etc, than on themselves. I had to tell them to control themselves several times.

Tonight would make the night they had to start worrying about packing. But I could see that my friends were really beginning to enjoy themselves. The last few days were just warm ups, that's why I brought them to places that didn't require much shopping. JTB should really pay me for the amount of spending I encouraged for their country.

As I walked the streets of Ueno in the evning, I couldn't help but look up into the sky and sigh. Is it me, or is the sky just more beautiful over there? In the day, the skies are postcard-perfect blue, in the evenings, the skies are painting-perfect shades of blue. Such a beautiful city, but how many Japanese have actually looked up to their skies and see the colours that I see?


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