| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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He was able to recommend a reasonably priced place to stay in Kyoto, so we'll probably call and make reservations soon.
At about 9:00 (to miss the rush hour) we went to Ikebukuro Station and took the Yamanote line to Ueno. Even after the 'official' rush hour, it was still very busy, with people rushing about blithely ignoring the arrows indicating directions for pedestrian traffic in passageways and on stairs. We had heard that the JR lines (including the Yamanote) were more expensive than the subway lines, but this was only ¥160 each and the subway would have involved changing trains for not much of a savings. (The cheapest subway fare four years ago was ¥120, and this was probably further than that would cover.) Ueno Station was easy to recognize-even in Japanese, the train announcements here are clearer than back home. Ueno is one of the bigger stations (as is Ikebukuro) and is full of shops of all sorts. Outdoor are even more stores and restaurants with very reasonably priced food. One sushi place had bento boxes of assorted sushi at prices cheaper than in the United States, and if it hadn't been raining, we might have picked up something for a picnic in the park.
However, it was raining, which made Ueno Park somewhat less appealing than it would normally be. We passed a statue to Takamori Saigo, a samurai who first helped restore the emperor in 1868 and later fought against him when he curtailed the power and privileges of the samurai class. A bit further on are the tombs of the soldiers who fought against him defending the Tokugawa Shogunate. General MacArthur wanted the statue taken down as being too nationalistic, but there was so much public outcry that he changed his mind.
Shortly after this was the Kiyomizu-do Kannon Temple to the goddess of child-bearing and child-raising. It had been closed for renovation until a few months ago, during which time a temporary temple has been built to accommodate worshippers.
We then went looking for the Toshogu Shrine, but got sidetracked at first by a smaller shrine to the goddess of letters and medicine. Eventually we got where we were going, the shrine to Ieyasu Tokugawa (also known as Tokugawa Ieyasu, since true Japanese style places the family name first, but many Japanese names get 'Westernized' in translation). He founded the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603 after Nobunaga deposed the emperor. This shogunate lasted until 1863 when it was overthrown by men such as Takamori Seigo, and the Edo Era ended and the Meiji Era began. This was followed in 1912 by the Taisho Era, in 1926 by the Showa, and in 1989 by the Heisei. In modern times the era changes with each emperor, though earlier this was not true. (The Fujiwara Era, for example ran from 858 to 1160.)
The shrine itself is at the end of a long aisle flanked by stone lanterns used for religious purposes. There were many prayer plaques left on a rack near the shrine. These are pieces of wood, about the size of postcards, and also similar in that they seem to have pre-printed pictures or illustrations on one size. On the other people write their prayers and leave them hanging by their cords on a rack. (One assumes that someone regularly removes the older ones, sort of like cleaning old notices off the community 'for sale' boards back home.)
There is also a memorial marked by a piece of a tree burnt in the bombing raids of 1945 and found nearby in 1991, dedicated as a memorial to peace.
We got to the Tokyo National Museum about 10:45, having decided to do this one before the other museums because it was said to be the museum to see. There was a major exhibit of works from the Horyu-ji Treasures as well as the usual exhibits of pottery, painting, swords, armor, and so on, as well as an entire gallery of non-Japanese Asian art. (This includes Egyptian art, which I suppose is connected stylistically to Asia but is not actually Asian.) The museum has 90,000 pieces but displays only a small number at any one time. This small number was enough to keep us occupied until almost 15:00, however, so we were glad we had come here first instead of having too little time.
There were some Westerners in the buildings (the museum occupies several buildings, including the three main display halls), but almost all the visitors were Japanese, including some small groups of school children, and also one large group of adults (maybe thirty or so) who were apparently getting a lecture about a particular Chinese painting in the non-Japanese gallery.
There was one painting that looked very familiar to me: 'Two Beauties' by Utagawa Toyokuni. Maybe it was used as the cover of a book or something, but I feel like I've seen it a lot.
We also dropped into the museum store, with typical museum store prices, and the restaurant for lunch, with atypical museum restaurant prices: I had curried rice for ¥530 and Mark had katsuiya (pork cutlet over rice) for ¥720. Since there is no tax and no tipping, this is actually less than this sort of meal would cost in a museum in the United States. (Beverages, however, were expensive: ¥300 for coffee or tea, and ¥220 for a small cola.) This restaurant, like so many other restaurants, had a display of them menu as plastic food in a case by the door. Also supposedly common (though this was the only place we saw it) was the purchase method: you go to the cashier, tell her what you want (based on the labels), and pay her. She gives you a ticket for each item, and when you sit down, the waiter comes by, takes your ticket, and brings back your food.
(Beverages seemed uniformly high-priced in restaurants, no matter how cheap the food. That must be why there are so many beverage vending machines around, at about a third what the cost would be in a restaurant.)
By the time we finished here, it was clear we would not have time for the National Museum of Western Art, the National Science Museum, and the Shitamachi Museum. Since the latter was a sort of 'Museum of Everyday Life' of Tokyo over the last century or so, that seemed like the best choice (being something unlike what we have at home). This was outside Ueno Park but very nearby, and although small, had interesting displays of magazines, children's games (including sumo wrestler trading cards), and other memorabilia. Unfortunately there were very few labels in English, but we could tell what most of the items were in general: an exhibit of ways to combat insects, a collections of movie magazines, even a hula hoop. There were also recreations of shops and tenement homes as they would have been before the 1923 earthquake. Well, not entirely as they would have been, since each recreation had modern items in it as well: a calendar, very recent children's toys, and so on. Maybe that's a way of saying that this way of life still continues in some sense, even though the buildings were destroyed, if not by the earthquake then by the war and its aftermath of reconstruction.
(Oh, by the way, the costs for these were ¥200 for the shrine, ¥790 for the Tokyo National Museum, and ¥200 for the Shitamachi Museum.)
We then walked along one of the main shopping streets in Ueno, Chuo-Dori, and then along Ameyo Yokocho, a pedestrian shopping street that used to be a wholesale candy district, but now is full of stalls selling everything from fish to jewelry at a discount. They had cheap watches, but we couldn't find a cheap watch strap for my watch (from which I had removed the strap so I could carry it as a pocket watch). Maybe it doesn't pay to replace a strap these days on an electronic watch.
By now it was almost 17:00, and I was exhausted. (Carrying around three different guidebooks in my shoulder bag didn't help.) Rather than stand around and then end up in rush hour, we went directly back, planning to go out again in a couple of hours. However, we both fell asleep and when we woke up decided it was too late.
October 9, 1996: Since we woke up (relatively) early (a little after 5:00), we decided to do Tsukiji today rather than try to wake up even earlier another day.
Getting tickets from the subway ticket machine is not all that difficult, even when there is no English. The lines are all color-coded, so if you know you're going nine stops on the red line and then two stops on the gray, it's easy to find the stop and read the price underneath (which is in Arabic numerals). Tickets from Ikebukuro to Tsukiji are ¥180, which means that the subway prices and JR prices are pretty comparable. The JR trains have maps with all the stops labeled, but some of the subway lines have electronic maps, where the current station lights up, making it even easier to find the right stop.
The subway cars themselves are very clean, with no litter, and no graffiti. As an example of how well passengers take care of the subways, the seats are a plush cloth, and it has no tears or stains. (The old New York subways, or maybe it was the LIRR, used to have this sort of seat covering before the war, and when it was phased out, a friend of my father's who worked for them got some of the discarded material to use as a backing for a handmade chessboard for my father.)
The word is that 7:30 to 9:00 is rush hour. I can at least assure you that 6:00 to 6:30 is not.
Random note: While the ryokan toilet is Western style, many toilets in museums and other public buildings are Japanese style.
Well, we got to Tsukiji and glanced in the Temple. However, since a service seemed to be in progress, we decided not to go up to the front to peer at the statue of the Buddha, but instead went off to the fish market itself.
We got to what appeared to be the right area, and it had a wholesale fish market look to it. Only two things were missing: people and fish. We wandered around the deserted area for a while and finally came upon the police box, where Mark determined that the market was closed for Health and Sports Day, a national holiday. Strange, our book claimed that was tomorrow, as did a couple of other tourists we met (and as did the Tourist Information Center when we went there later). Maybe the wholesalers close the day before the retailers do, or some such.
Given that this pretty much messed up the whole day's plans (we had been planning on taking a ferry to Asakusa after seeing Tsukiji, but it wasn't running this early), we decided to do the Imperial Palace Walking Tour. The weather wasn't ideal (sun would have been nice), but at least it wasn't raining. The first thing of interest we saw on this tour wasn't even mentioned in the book: a statue of Godzilla. Not life-size, alas, but about three feet high on a pedestal across from the Toho Twin Towers building.
We were so early here that pretty much everything was closed. You can't go into the Imperial Palace anyway, but we did take the obligatory picture from the Nujibashi Bridge. We got to the East Garden about twenty minutes before it 9:30 opening, and had to hang around waiting. We walked through, stopping briefly at the small museum of pieces from the previous Emperor's collection. (It was only a brief stop because only about a dozen pieces are exhibited at any one time.) At the top of the hill are the remains of Tokugawa's castle.
We decided to skip the Museum of Modern Art and the Science Museum (not the same museum as yesterday's skipped National Museum of Science) because we felt museumed-out already-or at least for the time being.
We started toward the Shrine to the War Dead, but decided we needed to eat first, since we hadn't eaten in almost twenty-four hours. We wanted down the street a few blocks and found several choices in this business area. I had said what I really wanted was a bowl of noodles, and sure enough, one of the places was a noodle shop. There were the plastic models of food outside, but at first there appeared to be no prices on them. Then I noticed the Japanese symbol for yen (not a 'Y' with an '=' through it, but a kanji character), and realized that the prices were in Japanese kanji numerals rather than Arabic. |
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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