So today I took a lovely subway ride to Ueno and visited the park. Ueno park is a very large place, holding a number of statues and buildings. I only saw about half of it while I was there. My original intention was to find a quiet place to sit with some food and read a book, but there was so much to see while I was there I never pulled my book out.
The entrance to the park is beautiful with a couple of water features, some mature trees with sitting areas and lockers for valuables if you do not want to carry them throughout the park. The way sitting areas are done in Japan is very interesting. On a flat surface, like the stone work around a tree, there are a number of evenly spaced raised dividers creating separated seats without actually making purpose built benches or seats. It blends wonderfully with the environment.
Once I climbed the stone steps into the park proper it was a total isolation from the city around me. Trees and grass areas everywhere, stone work, older buildings and apparently four museums, although only three were open. There is also a lake area with boat rental and a zoo, but I did not visit those. I took a quiet stroll visiting a shrine building, a number of statues and finally ended up at the first museum. The museum of western art.
This museum had a very long line outside of it, and was the only line I waited in all day. The entrance cost was very reasonable, and I decided to just see the fixed collection. It was definitely much smaller than the art gallery back home, and I was able to look through everything in about forty five minutes or so. A lot of the pieces were similar to European art I have seen dating between 1600 and 1900 and portrayed very Christian themes. There were also some still life and portrait paintings, but a lot fewer of those. I really enjoyed the works, and it is a fine collection to walk through. The history of the building and the collections is really fascinating as well. On my way out I stopped by the cafe for lunch and had a wonderful salad, pasta and dessert meal.
Next up was the Natural History museum. They had an exhibit room of traditional craftsmen doing work using traditional tools. One man was hand carving wood plaques, another was making copper cups, and a third was doing wood block prints. There were a bunch of other stations as well but about half were not occupied at the time I was there. The rest of the exhibits were similar to what I have seen at other museums like this one, but specific to Japan, including ancient and current animal life, early man, a mineral area, and ancient tools and earthen ware.
After that I took a long walk over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum. This one is more about recent past Japan. There were some displays of Buddha statues, all of which were specified no photography, which I think is very important, katana blades, scrolls, traditional samurai armor and my favourite, long wall paintings in the Japanese style. I walked through for about two hours, looking at the many items and really enjoyed seeing everything they had displayed.
As the museum was closing down I walked back out and headed back toward the entrance along the other side of the park. There was a free outdoor festival of Japan & Pakistan peace which was currently doing an idol show so I stayed a few minutes to listen. There were also a lot of craft and food booths set up, some of which were very pretty, but it was getting late and the sun was starting to go down so I wanted to head back home.
On my way to the subway station I stopped at a sushi restaurant and ordered a combination plate of sushi. It was very good. I enjoyed it a lot. Watching the chef was amazing too. He was so fast and everything looked so wonderful as he was putting the pieces on the dishes. Such a good meal.
Finally I made it home, although I did get out at the wrong exit gate and had to cross a few streets to get home. Anyway made it in after a full day. So nice, peaceful and I highly recommend the park for anyone coming to Japan.
Tomorrow is entirely unplanned at this point. Maybe souvenir shopping, not sure yet.
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