Ueno Park & the Tokyo National Museum – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

The Tokyo Food Tour I was on this morning took place in the Ueno district of Tokyo, starting and ending close to the large Ueno Park. After finishing the tour, I explored the park.

Inside Ueno Park, there are trees and other vegetation, statues, a large zoo, a couple of temples, a couple of art galleries, and some museums. One of the museums is the Tokyo National Museum. After wandering around the parkland areas of Ueno Park for a while, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the Tokyo National Museum.

Ueno Park

Near the entrance to Ueno Park that I used, there’s a large statue of Saigo Takamori. He was a samurai and a leader in a rebellion that overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate, and he helped to move Japan into the modern age.

But all did not go well for him. When Saigo faced inevitable defeat, he committed ritual samurai suicide. However, he became a hero posthumously and, hence, the statue.

A 2003 movie with Tom Cruise, “The Last Samurai,” was inspired by the story of Saigo. I haven’t seen it. So, no comment.

Ueno Park has a large pond, Shinabazu Pond, that’s divided into three sections. One of those sections is choked with green aquatic vegetation. According to one of my guidebooks, they must be lotus plants because the book tells me that in July, that section of the pond is bursting with lotus blooms.

It’s now late October. The pond was covered in green and no blooms when I was there. In fact, you had to look closely through the plants to see that there was water there at all. However, there was one point on a pedestrian bridge over the pond where there was a bit of a break in the plant cover. There, a group of vigorous fish were busy eating. I don’t know what kind of fish they were (they had a kind of catfish look to them, but I’m not an ichthyologist, so what do I know?) or what they were eating. Humans weren’t feeding them, but for some reason, a cluster gathered there in a feeding frenzy, occasionally opening their proportionately large mouths as wide as they could go to gobble down some sort of plant or animal matter.

Another section of the pond is open water. People can traverse in swan boats and paddleboats.

I walked by a couple of the temples on the Ueno Park grounds, but I looked at them only from the outside.

Even without the institutions within it, the parkland of Ueno Park is enjoyable enough on its own. As I mentioned, the only other attraction I got to in the park was the Tokyo National Museum.

Tokyo National Museum

The Tokyo National Museum comprises a few buildings, one of which, the one housing the Japanese Gallery, is quite large. There is a single admission price to the grounds containing all of the buildings.

There are both ticketing booths and ticketing machines at the entrance. As I got close and was trying to figure out which to use, a nattily attired gentleman from the museum approached me and asked, in English, “If you don’t mind, may I ask you how old you are?”

I responded, “72.”

With an astonished look on his face, he replied, “72! You can’t be 72! I would have sworn that you were at least 90. Maybe even 100. How did you get to be so decrepid at only 72?”

No. That’s not really what he said. That’s just what I was expecting him to say. What he really said was that for anyone over 70, entrance to all but any special exhibitions in the Tokyo National Museum is free. All I had to do was show my passport or other proof of my age at the entrance, and I could go right in.

Woohoo! Age has its advantages sometimes. Becoming increasingly decrepit and being closer to death aren’t two of them, but at least you sometimes get stuff cheap or free.

I read somewhere that foreigners are supposed to carry their passports with them while they’re in Japan. In other countries, unless I’m aware I’m supposed to do that, I usually leave my passport in the safe in my hotel room. However, I had it with me here and used it to get into the museum.

I went into the Japan Gallery first. The large building contains collections on two levels. There are all kinds of old statues, religious and otherwise, of various vintages in the rooms of the Japan Gallery. The gallery rooms also contain other artworks, old swords, armour, vases, old masks that were used in presentations of plays, and pottery, as well as I forget what else.

Another of the buildings in the Tokyo National Museum houses its archaeological collection. That building is connected by a hallway to the Japan Gallery building. That’s fitting because it contains strictly Japanese archaeological artifacts.

One of the buildings that is not connected to the Japan Gallery is the Gallery of Horyu-Ji Treasures. The estates of the Horyu-Ji temple near Nara, Japan, were heavily damaged during the Meiji reforms. The impoverished temple gave the Imperial family many of its treasures in return for funding. Those treasures are now on display in the Gallery of Horyu-Ji Treasures.

Among the collection are about three dozen beautiful gilt bronze statues, all of which are between only 30 and 40 centimetres (12-15 inches) tall. This building also contains other statues and other forms of art of various materials, along with pottery. Most of the artifacts in the Gallery of Horyu-Ji Treasures are from the 6th century. (The labels listed only the century. I assume it’s CE.)

Behind the Tokyo National Museum buildings, there’s a lovely garden with a pond, greenery and some old-style (and, perhaps, indeed old; I don’t know) small Japanese structures. There’s also a small, ornamental, five-storey pagoda. I visited the gardens after the Gallery of Horyu-Ji Treasures.

The last of the museum buildings I visited was the Asian Gallery. Yes, I know Japan is part of Asia. But this building contains artifacts from across much of the rest of Asia outside of Japan. China was heavily represented there. But I also saw pieces from Cambodia, India, Afghanistan, among other Asian countries.

To be honest, I rushed through the Asia Gallery building. It’s not that it wasn’t interesting. It’s just that I didn’t get into the building until about half an hour before closing time. Shortly after I entered, there was an announcement broadcast in the museum in both Japanese and English about the fast-approaching closing time.

So, as I said, I rushed through. One of the many worries I have is that I’m going to get locked into places I visit if I inadvertently don’t leave in time. What can I say that I haven’t said before? It’s not easy being me.

In my journal posts, I usually try to avoid spoilers about what’s coming up in my future entries. I’m going to repeat that practice now. In this case, it’s not so much that I want to maintain the element of surprise, but more because I don’t know.

Apart from this morning’s Tokyo Food Tour (and any future tours that I haven’t yet, but might book), in a practice I started during the last trip or two, I’ve resolved to do very little day-to-day planning on this trip. At breakfast tomorrow, I’ll decide where I want to start my day and then figure it out from there based on what’s close by to that, whatever that is.

So, at this point, tomorrow will be as much of a surprise to me as it will be to you. Unless, of course, you read these out of sequence. In that case, tomorrow might not be a surprise to you at all by the time you read this. If so, please let me know if I enjoyed it.