We left home in Hobart early on a Saturday morning and landed in Tokyo (Narita) at 7 pm that evening. Caught the train into the city. We’d booked a hotel on the edge of Ueno Park so as to get full exposure to the cherry blossom festival and it turned out to be a great location. This was our first experience of a Japanese hotel and we did find the room to be very small.
Our first day was Sunday 2nd April and through a mix of good planning and good luck this turned out to be peak blossom day in Tokyo. The first cherry blossoms happen in the subtropical southern islands of Okinawa then bloom further and further north all the way to Hokkaido over a matter of weeks. The cherry blossom ‘front’ is forecast each year and early April for Tokyo turned out to be spot on in 2017.
We stepped out of the hotel and straight into Ueno Park where we immersed ourselves in hanami. The cherry blossom was beautiful but we quickly realised it was the cultural interaction with this natural event that is most interesting. The park was crowded but everyone was in good spirts. Blue tarps were being laid out in pre-booked spaces under the blossom trees, and makeshift tables made from cardboard boxes groaned under the weight of food and drinks. There was an amazing array of food stalls and we ate very happily from these for much of the week.
Inside the park is the Ueno Toshugo Shrine dedicated to the shogun Tokugawa Ieysau. It dates from 1651 and is one of the few early-Edo period structures that has survived in Tokyo.
When the crowds got a bit much we wandered to the northern boundary of the park then around the edge of the National Museum to the Kan’ei-ji Temple and its cemetery. Once a great complex, there’s not a lot left of Kan’ei-ji after it was razed in 1868 by revolutionary forces.
Later in the day we stretched our legs with a long walk through the Akihabara district, famous for its electronics retailers, then on to the parkland around the Imperial Palace. A great first day.
Next day we took to wandering the streets of Tokyo without any major sites in mind, hoping to get a feel for the city.
Ueno Park has a lake called Shinobazuno Pond and it was still and reflective as we headed off.
Yushima-ten Mangu Shrine was established in 458 though the current buildings were reconstructed in 1955 and are surrounded by concrete and high rise. It is dedicated to Michizane Sugawara, a 9th C scholar, and prospective University students hoping to pass entrance exams come here to make offerings. The site is near the University of Tokyo main campus.
We wandered on past the Tokyo Dome and Korakuen Amusement Park. The rides looked great, from a distance…
We found our way to Kagurazaka. During the Edo Period it lay just outside the outer moat of Edo Castle and gained prominence as an entertainment district with geisha houses and restaurants. We walked up the sloping Waseda-dori Avenue stopping at Zenkoku-ji temple and later at Akagi-jinja shrine. Akagi-jinja was rebuilt in 2010 by the architect Kengo Kuma. They were filming an episode of Master Chef when we visited, complete with Matt Preston in cravat, waffling on. We’ve never watched this show, and nothing we saw that day made us think we’d been missing out.
The weather became stormy at this point so we hopped on a train back to the hotel. Later we headed into Ueno Park for dinner which was great fun.
The National Museum was only a short walk from our hotel so it was the first stop next morning. We strolled through Ueno Park checking out bored teenagers reserving spaces for family and friends, and took the mandatory selfie under a blossom tree.
The Tokyo National Museum is Japan’s largest and has four main galleries. We spent several hours exploing the Japanese gallery (Honkan), Japanese archaeology gallery (Heiseikan), Asian gallery (Toyokan) and the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures (Buddhist artwork from Kyoto). Only a selection of the full collection is on show at any point in time which we really liked. It wasn’t overwhelming, felt spacious, and the exhibits were well explained in English. The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures is a modern building completed in 1999 and designed by the architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The grounds of the museum are also lovely, including the Kuromon (Black Gate) dating from the late 18th C. One thing we found striking was how much the terracotta funerary monuments called Haniwa from the Kofun period (300-700) looked like those of the Minoans from Ancient Greece.
In the afternoon we walked to the Kappabashi district known as ‘kitchen town’ for its concentration of shops catering to the restaurant trade.
From there we walked on to the Asakusa district which was lots of fun. We cruised along the Nakamise Shopping Street where dressing up in kimonos was clearly a thing. Later in the evening we went back to Ueno Park to eat off the food stalls, rounding out a great day in Tokyo.
Another day we caught the Yamanote Line to Shinjuku for a bit of camera shopping and a Japanese department store experience. There’s some interesting modern architecture in this area. The Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower was designed by Tange Associates, the architectural firm founded by the late Kenzo Tange. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building was designed by Tange himself and completed in 1990.
Part way through this day I became a bit obsessed with Tokyo’s taxis. I loved the distinctive colour combinations adopted by the different companies, and have put together a gallery called Taxis of Tokyo.
After lunch we walked south to visit the Meiji Jingu shrine dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. There was a wedding underway. The Shrine and adjacent Yoyogi Park make up a large forested area within the city which provides some pleasant respite from the hustle and bustle.
The weather was indifferent so we opted to head indoors and visit the Ota Museum of Art. This museum features a rotating exhibition of ukiyo-e (woodblock) prints from a 12,000 print collection amassed by the late Seizō Ota.
From there we took a look at the Yoyogi Stadium, a famous Kenzo Tange design for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
At the end of the day we checked out Shibuya crossing, awash in neon lights, before hopping on the Yamanote Line and circling back to our hotel.
Next day we caught the metro to Ginza and wandered the streets with an eye out for iconic architecture.
Started at Yonchome Intersection with the art-deco Wako Store and clock tower on one corner, and the ultra-modern Ginza Place (Nissan and Sony showroom) diagonally opposite. Walked down Harumi-dori Avenue past the striking PIAS Building to see the old Kabuki Theatre. It’s dramatically backed by the Kabukiza Tower, which created interesting reflections on the curved facade of the building opposite. A koban is a small neighbourhood police station and the Ginza Koban stood out as an interesting structure. Stepped indoors for a while to visit the Ginza Leica store which had a gallery showing photographic exhibitions, including photos of Antarctica by Herbert Ponting from Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. We then went to see two pieces of iconic Tokyo architecture. The Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Centre is an amazing building by Kenzo Tange. Built in 1967, it was his first realisation of Metabolism which fuses ideas about architectural structures with those of organic biological growth. Not far away is the Nakagin Capsule Tower built by Kisho Kurokawa who was one of Tange’s students. Sadly it was in a state of disrepair when we visited, with netting draped over the building to protect passers-by from falling debris.
Next stop was the old Tsukiji fish market (now moved) where we had a great sushi lunch.
After lunch we visited Hama-rikyu Gardens on the edge of the bay. The serenity of the gardens was magnified by the backdrop of skyscrapers.
From there we jumped on a boat and cruised up the Sumida River. It’s always interesting to view a port city from the water. We could see the Tokyo tidal barrage and the Fuji Sankei Building (another Kenzo Tange) across the bay. Not all of the architecture we saw was pleasing to our eyes, and the Asahi Building by Philippe Starck looked a bit…um…flashy.
Hopped off the boat at Asakusa. We’d enjoyed it there earlier in the week and again had fun in the shopping streets, walking through Kaminarimon Gate and visiting Senso-ji Temple. It’s Tokyo’s oldest temple and is very lively and colourful.
This was another great day in the fabulous city of Tokyo.
On our last day in Tokyo we had a few practicalities to attend to in the morning. In between errands we visited the nearby Jyomyo-In Temple which has thousands of Jizo statues (guardian saint of children), then checked out another section of what’s left of the Kan’ei-ji Temple complex.
At lunch time we headed into Ueno Park for one last feast from the food stalls. Being able to eat so well and so cheaply from the stalls was an unexpected pleasure of our stay in Tokyo.
I’d developed a bit of a thing for Kenzo Tange’s architecture by this stage so we caught a cab to Sekiguchi to see his gorgeous St Mary’s Cathedral. It’s a remarkable building that is clad in steel and manages to look both angular and curvaceous. (I subsequently put together a gallery of all his buildings we saw in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Yokohama – see here.)
Finding our way back to the hotel we sought out a blossom-lined section of the Kanda River for one last taste of hanami in Tokyo.
