Some news

• Air India flight 307 left 成田空港 (Narita Airport in Chiba (near Tokyo)) for India on Sunday, 21 September 2008 but had to return to Narita because parts of the engine fell off…and struck two parked cars near the airport.One piece of debris sliced through the wind-shield of a car like butter. Luckily noone was hurt.
• The American Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, U.S.S. George Washington, is scheduled to arrive in Japan tomorrow to commence being homeported in 横須賀 (Yokosuka (south of Tokyo)).A large number of protesters are expected to greet the ship because many Japanese are against having a nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ship even visit Japan, not to mention being stationed here.

  

• On Monday, 22 September 2008 (two days after his 68th birthday), 麻生太郎 (Tarou ASOU) was chosen to be the new Prime Minister of Japan.

  

  (My post about the former Prime Minister, 福田康夫 (Yasuo FUKUDA), resigning on Sept 1st is here).

秋分の日

Yesterday was a Japanese holiday, 秋分の日 (Autumn Equinox)…so we all had the day off.

Both the 秋分の日 (Autumn Equinox) and 春分の日 (Spring Equinox) are holidays in Japan. Japanese people pay a visit to their family grave on these holidays.
(See my FAQ here to read about Japan’s holidays).

After we went to our family grave site, we decided to go to the Tokyo Dome City amusement park because we still had ride tickets from our last visit there.

I agreed to ride on the big, wild roller-coaster with my kids.

I’ll never do that again! I used to really like roller-coasters when I was my kids’ ages…but I’ve decided that I don’t like them anymore!

I thought I’d be able to take a video of the ride…but the amusement park staff wouldn’t let me bring my camera on the ride. It’s just as well…I couldn’t have been able to use my camera since both of my hands were holding the handrail on the roller-coaster with a deathgrip for the entire ride!

(But last month I took a video of this roller-coaster while I was standing safely on the ground. It’s on this post).

After the amusement park, we walked to 根津神社 (Nezu Shrine).

This is a video of the shrine’s entrance:

Nezu Shrine has a row of over 150 Torii Gates.

Here’s a video I took while walking under all of the 鳥居 (Torii Gates):

Here’s the rest of them:

A few more videos of the shrine:

From there we walked to 上野 (Ueno) and went to some temples, the park, and a few stores around there.

We found this small 蝉 (cicada):

We had dinner in an 居酒屋 (Japanese izakaya restaurant).

We went home from 上野駅 (Ueno Train Station)…and walked past the Hard Rock Cafe, Uyeno-eki Tokyo.

Here’s a video I took walking to the entrance of 上野駅 (Ueno train station):