This is the neighborhood of our hotel.
The hotel is the tall building on the right-hand side of the picture towering over the 2-story UNIQLO Asakusa store.
On the left-hand side of the photo is the Don Quijote Asakusa store, which is like a supermarket + Walmart.

Asakusa's 200 meters long Nakamise-dori (仲見世 街) shopping street viewed
from the Tourist Information Center's 8th-floor observation deck.
This street leads from Sensoji temple's outer gate (Kaminarimon, 雷門) to its second gate (Hozomon, 宝蔵門).
This shopping street has a history of several centuries.

At Ueno station's JR East Travel Service Center.
There was a queue. It took us about 20 minutes to advance to the front of the queue.

This lady worked for about 50-min in total to exchange our rail vouchers for rail passes, plus
reserved all the train seats for 8 people according to our train schedule printed on a sheet of paper.
We also bought WELCOME SUICA cards for everyone from her, adding one more task to her workload.
(By buying IC cards from her, we could pay by credit card. Buying from a machine, we'd have to feed cash to the machine.)

Since it seemed to take forever to complete the task at the JR East Travel Service Center,
the rest of the family found this fruit parlor to sit and enjoyed some sweets.
(Ayumi stayed at the JR East Service Center with MC to complete the tasks over there.)

The fruit dessert cafe is a branch of the popular Sembikiya (千疋屋) from Kyobashi.

GINZA PLACE is a landmark building in Ginza, diagonally across the street from the Wako department store.
It houses a Nissan showroom, a SONY showroom, and a few shops and restaurants,
including 春水堂(Chun Shui Tang) from Taiwan, supposedly the inventor of boba tea.

Sato Yosuke (佐藤養助) udon restaurant.
The current owner is the 8th generation running the Sato Yosuke udon business.

We were divided into 2 tables.

The other table.

Two kinds of sauce to dip your cold udon into.
They were very good.
Inaniwa udon (稻庭烏龍麵) has a history of more than 300 years.
It is said to be one of the three most famous types of udon in Japan, being soft and chewy and smooth.
It was created by Sato Ichibe, who lived in Inagawa, Akita City, Akita prefecture.
It was improved by Inaniwa Kichizaemon in mid-Edo era, which further added to its popularity.
Since the Meiji era, it has been presented to the Ministry of the Imperial Household, and won
numerous awards in regional food exhibitions.

You may order udon in a hot soup too.

At the entrance to the UNIQLO Ginza store.

The counter where customers placed their orders to a human.

A robot delivering orders to customers.

Multiple robots doing the busy bee work.

Thank you!

Sensoji basked in the glow of the late-afternoon sun.
The building on the far left is the main hall of Sensoji.