art and animals

today was a big day. we think we walked like 10 miles.

our first destination was an exhibit of claude monet paintings at the nakanoshima museum of art.

i imagine my traveling companions, who only recently arrived in japan, were feeling the same train anxiety that plagued me on my first few days of the trip, because we left early and arrived at the museum an hour before it opened. we used this opportunity to go get breakfast. we found a small cafe called Calen, and got breakfast.

breakfast was pretty good. i got cheese toast and a boiled egg.

also for some reason i was desperately craving orange juice, so i stopped in a 7-eleven and grabbed one before heading to the exhibit.

there are a ton of paintings here, probably 50 or 60. but most of them are not allowed to be photographed. i took a picture of every painting i was allowed to.

there is some really beautiful artwork here. it is organized by periods of monet’s life, so you really get to see how he changed as a painter over time. at the start of the exhibit, most of the paintings are highly detailed “realistic” portrayals, and then as the exhibit moves on, it transitions slowly into the impressionist style he is known for. i really enjoyed this exhibit. and it was only $16.50 to attend.

onward, to our next stop, the tennoji zoo. i got a few photos along the way.

tennoji zoo

our next destination was the tennoji zoo in osaka. i wasn’t sure what to expect with this, as i may be spoiled by the san diego zoo being so amazing. it was only 500 yen ($3.30) to get in, which felt like an absolute steal.

it was a pretty small zoo, google maps said most people are here for about an hour and a half, and that proved to be true. i got some great photos. some of the animals looked kind of miserable and i didn’t include pictures of them. there were several monkeys, but they were hard to get pictures of because of large metal bars, and they also looked kind of miserable. most animals either looked happy and relaxed, but a few looked kind of miserable.

at one point, i wanted to sit down and relax, so i gave my roommate my camera while he went to the rest of the exhibits. he got some great photos.

all in all, a great day. we headed home from here, and i got one more photo.

hanami celebrations are out in full force now, as japanese people celebrate cherry blossom season.

dinner

we originally planned to go to a sushi restaurant called toki sushi:

like many restaurants in japan, there was only about 10 or 12 chairs in a very tiny room. it was packed, so we decided to move on and go somewhere else.

after walking around and looking at a variety of restaurants, we settled on a place i have eaten before, matsuya.