Day 14: Friday, December 5 (The Day We Did Karaoke)
(Written Friday, posted Friday) It was our last day in Japan. We woke early and had breakfast in the hotel, then headed to Ueno Park. We visited three temples and got our last stamps for our temple book--Kiyomizu Kannon-do, where women who wish to conceive a child leave dolls for a Goddess of Mercy; Benten-do, a memorial to a patron goddess of the arts; and Tosho-gu, which features an eternally burning flame from Nagasaki in a shrine to world peace and nuclear disarmament. Near the flame hung many chains of origami cranes. We headed next to the Tokyo National Museum, where we saw artifacts dating back as far as 10,000 BC--pottery, kabuki costumes, calligraphy, painted screens. Neither of us is very interested in this kind of art--we would have preferred to see a special exhibition of Vermeer at a nearby museum--but we thought we needed to round out our Japan exploration. Satisfied with our taste of cultural history, we headed next to Ameya Yokocho, a shopping arcade--the same streets w...