Going. Ginza. Gone. – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

When I returned to Tokyo yesterday for one night to catch my plane today, I stayed at a different hotel from the one I stayed at for six nights at the start of this trip. I spent my last night in the Ginza district of Tokyo.

My flight isn’t scheduled to leave until early evening. My hotel gave me a free late checkout, but only until 2:00. If I left the hotel at 3:00, that would still get me to the airport three hours before my flight. I have lounge access at the airport, but many airport lounges have started restricting access to no more than three hours before your flight unless you’re waiting for a connecting flight.

I wanted a lounge so I’d have a comfortable place to type these words.

I was able to access a lounge at my hotel thanks to having status at the hotel group it belongs to. I was kind of surprised the hotel had a business lounge at all because it’s one of the hotel group’s mid-range brands. It’s generally only the upper couple of tiers of hotels that have lounges. But I was thankful for it. When I asked for a late checkout and was told I could have it only until 2:00, the hotel volunteered that I could use the lounge after checkout.

I decided to do that. As much as I like Tokyo and probably would have otherwise left my bags at the front desk and spent the extra time out and about, the forecast called for rain starting at 1:00. I didn’t relish wandering around in the rain.

As it turned out, the forecast was wrong. The rain started at about 11:00. However, it barely reached an intensity that could be called a drizzle.

The rain was so light that I never bothered to open my umbrella. Although that had a lot to do with the fact that I left it in my hotel.

Because my hotel was in the Ginza district, I spent the time I had available this morning within the district. I got close to Ginza during my time in Tokyo at the start of this trip (the Imperial Palace borders it), but I hadn’t spent any time in it.

During my time in Ginza, I visited Hibiya Park and the Art Aquarium and walked past Kabuki-za. On my way back to the hotel, I also walked past another landmark, but I’ll save that for later.

Because this is the end of my time in Tokyo and on this trip, at the end of this post, you’ll find summaries of my time in Tokyo and this whole Japan trip.

Ginza Sights:

Ginza contains Tokyo’s main shopping district, with several luxury brands stationed there, along with many middle-class shops. I’m averse to shopping, so I walked by many stores, but I didn’t go into any except …

Ginza also hosts several restaurants of various classes and types. I’m not averse to eating, so I had lunch there. My limited experience is that it’s common in big cities in Japan for some tall buildings to have two or three floors’ worth of small restaurants in them. The restaurants can be on the first few floors. Or they might be on higher floors, with department stores or offices on the lower floors. Today I had lunch in a restaurant on the tenth floor of a building that had a huge department store and the Art Aquarium on the lower levels.

Hibiya Park

Hibya Park was about a 10-minute walk from my hotel. It’s a lovely park with a couple of ponds, trees, a flower garden, statues, a small hill, a playground, tennis courts, and a playing field. I read that it also has an outdoor concert venue. I didn’t see it. I’m not sure, but it might have been behind the construction hoarding that I did see.

In the middle of one of the ponds, there’s a crane statue with a fountain spouting out of the top of it. When I say “crane statue,” I am, of course, talking about a bird, not a large piece of construction equipment used to help construct tall buildings. Come to think of it, if the bird sculpture did help to construct tall buildings, now, that would be a sight to see indeed.

A sign by the statue told me that it was commissioned in 1905 and, “It is the third-oldest decorative fountain in Japan (the oldest is in Suwa-jinja Shrine, Nagasaki, and the second-oldest is in Mino Park, Osaka).”

Among the trees is a special one, an old ginkgo. A sign by it told me that the gingko tree stood at Hibiya Approach before the park opened. Around 1899, the already well-established tree was doomed to be cut down for a road expansion. The designer of the park, Dr. Seiroku Honda, was surprised to learn about the imminent felling. He got the Chairman of Tokyo at the time to agree to have the tree transplanted instead. And, there it is.

There’s also a gingko tree in the park that’s called “The Tree of Tokyo.” It was decided that Tokyo needed an official tree, like an official animal or official plant of a country. After a vote, the ginkgo biloba was named Tokyo’s official tree. That year, they planted a ginkgo biloba tree in Hibiya in honour of the new designation.

There is, as I mentioned, a hill in Hibiya Park. It’s a hill, and a tiny one at that, that thinks it’s a mountain. Don’t let anyone rob you of your dreams, little hill. Dream big and be your dreams!

A sign beside it names it as Mt. Mikasa. Despite naming it as a mountain, the body copy of the sign calls it a hillock, saying, “The hillock is an artificial one, made with leftover soil from the construction works making ponds when the park was constructed. At the time it was created, the physical shape of the whole area resembled three woven hats, or kasa in Japanese, so that it got its name “Mikasa”, meaning three woven hats.

“Due to improvement works such as the construction of the tennis courts, the mountain shape has changed, still the name of it remains as the original one.”

Art Aquarium

I suspect that when one particular reader read that a discussion of an art aquarium was coming up, she was probably particularly pleased. “Art and an aquarium in one, who could want anything more from life?” I hear her say in my mind.

Upon entering the Art Aquarium, still in Ginza, I entered a corridor. Mounted on one wall of the corridor were several small spherical aquariums with fish that were generally goldfish-sized, but not all goldfish. The lower half of the spheres was decorated with patterns. Inside the aquariums, in addition to the fish, there were small glass shapes—cylinders, spheres, etc.—on the bottom of the aquarium and lit from below. The tanks were also lit from elsewhere. The colours of the lights changed regularly.

The otherwise low ambient lighting level made it difficult to take pictures of the fish, which wouldn’t stay still for the shot. I tried, but I wasn’t happy with any of the results.

Not being able to see anything past the end of the corridor, I thought, “What? That’s it? That’s all they’ve got?”

It wasn’t. Around the corner of the corridor, there were more rooms. Exquisite rooms of aquariums with small fish.

There was another corridor with slim vertical floor-to-ceiling cylinders lining the walls on both sides of the corridor, with myriad goldfish swimming in each of them.

In other rooms, there were various shapes of tanks, some with sculptures hanging over or sitting beside the tanks. Some displays had tiers of artistically arranged aquariums.

Throughout the Art Aquarium, the lighting in and of the tanks regularly changed dramatically.

Some of the rooms had mirrored walls that people could use to take selfies. Other people, you understand. Not me. That’s what mirrors are for.

There was one section that had some parallel long tanks that were wavy-shaped. I can’t describe it well, so I took a short video of some of the action in one of the wavy rows.

In another section, there were more tall cylindrical tanks of a wider diameter than the goldfish corridor I mentioned above. I took a video of some of the action in one of those as well.

I didn’t know what to expect before I went to the Art Aquarium. I quite enjoyed it.

More pictures from the Art Aquarium:

Kabuki-za

The Kabuki-za is Tokyo’s primary venue for the Japanese theatrical art form, Kabuki. The theatre was built in 1889. It burned down in 1921 due to an electrical fire. A new theatre that was designed with higher safety standards and opened in 1924. That was destroyed in World War II bombings.

The replacement theatre was designed in the style of the 1924 building. That’s the theatre that stands today.

I only did a walk-by. A sign out front said you can only go inside with a ticket for a performance.

I’ve never seen kabuki. I’ve read that there are usually two performances a day, each with three or four acts lasting about an hour each. There are intermissions between acts, when audience members can eat their bento box meals so they don’t perish during the performance, I suppose.

Kabuki is in Japanese, but I read that the vivid costumes and masks, and dramatic movements, are worth seeing even if you don’t understand anything. I also read that during some performances, there are English guides who will explain the action for you. And, one of my travel information sources, I forgot which one, said that some theatres will sell tickets to just one act so tourists can get a taste. I don’t know if Kabuki-za is one of those theatres. I probably should have checked that out when I was in Tokyo for five days at the start of this trip, just so that I’d no longer have to say I’ve never seen kabuki.

On the way back to my hotel, I passed a Japanese film icon. Yesterday, I told you about the giant Godzilla head mounted on the top of a building in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. Today, I passed a much smaller and much closer to the ground full Godzilla statue.

With that icon seen, it was time to scurry back to my hotel just in time to make my deferred checkout time and put the closing bookend on the back of this trip.

Tokyo Summary

Tokyo is a huge, dynamic, heavily populated city. This is another way of saying it can, at times, be anxiety-inducing for people uncomfortable in crowds. People such as me, for example.

But there are several urban oases in a variety of green spaces and reflective Buddhist and Shinto religious buildings and their compounds—reflective even for a non-believer such as me—that provide an opportunity to decompress.

Like all of the Asian cities I’ve been to, its cultural and architectural differences make Tokyo somewhat exotic for lifelong Westerners, again such as me. I have not spent nearly enough time in Asia to have become blasé about that yet.

There are so many architectural sights, museums, temples, and shrines to see in Tokyo that it can feel overwhelming. But do your best if you go.

Sophisticated urbanites probably turn up their noses at any mention of the Tokyo Skytree. But I’m an unsophisticated urbanite. If you’ve never been to Tokyo or if you haven’t been recently and have forgotten much of your last visit, I recommend going to its observation decks. That’s probably the only place in Tokyo where you can comprehend in a few glimpses the immense vertical and horizontal scale of the city.

I spent six nights in Tokyo at the start of this trip, equating to five full days because I arrived at my Tokyo hotel in the early evening. I then spent another night in the city, with half days on either side of that night, before catching my flight back home.

If this were my first time in Tokyo, that definitely wouldn’t have been long enough. I could have filled a few more days, at the very least, in the city.

In fact, even though it wasn’t my first time in Tokyo, I would have appreciated a couple more days. There’s a lot I could have done, but didn’t do there.

Japan Trip Summary

Wow! At four weeks, including travel days, I think this is the longest trip I’ve ever taken. I’m not as exhausted as I expected to be and as I usually am after a trip of more than three weeks (some, but not as much), but I’m ready to go home. Nevertheless, I’m leaving wanting more time in Japan.

I can’t explain that lack of normal exhaustion. I’ve been on other trips that I’ve enjoyed as much as this one, but I’ve been much more worn out toward the end of them than at the end of this one. My age-related decrepitude isn’t reversing. So, I guess it was something about the trip that gave me as much day-to-day stamina as a man my age should reasonably expect to have.

There’s a Tokyo summary immediately above, so I won’t repeat here what I said there.

After Tokyo, I went to Hakone. Measured solely on scenic beauty, it was, hands down, the highlight of the trip. Nestled in lush forested mountains, it’s a striking place. Plus, there’s lots to see and do, and it’s easy to get around without a car. The three nights—two and a half days—were not enough. I would have enjoyed a couple more.

Next up, it was Kyoto, which is a truly amazing city. Let me qualify that: if you just wandered the city merely to feel the vibe of the streets, without taking in any of the sights, you’d probably think it’s a so-so city.

Then came Osaka. It’s a nice city. There are some interesting sights. Probably the best part of the city proper didn’t get as much play in these pages as it deserves, and that’s some of Osaka’s older neighbourhoods. They lack the polish and modernity of the many high-rises in the city. But their fine-grained, sometimes grungy storefronts gush character. Many of them contain restaurants, and I didn’t have any bad meals in Osaka. In fact, most of the meals were delicious.

That being said, there is not nearly as much to see in Osaka as there is in Kyoto. I think I spent enough time there, and had it not been for my side trip to beautiful and interesting Nara from Osaka, I probably would have gotten bored before the end of my four nights there.

After Osaka, I moved on to Himeji. There are some fabulous sights there, particularly the Himeji Castle and the Koko-en Gardens next door. But, to the best of my knowledge, there are only a few magnificent sights in there. And, from what little I saw of it, the rest of the city seemed, in my opinion, unexciting. I’m glad I visited—my trip would have been worse if I hadn’t—but my two nights, one-and-a-half days there, were probably sufficient.

Next up was Hiroshima. I’d been to Hiroshima once before, and both times being there was exceptionally evocative. I suspect if I were to return a dozen times more, it still would be. It’s impossible, at least for me, to be in Hiroshima and not have thoughts of the horrendous loss of life in particular, but also property and cultural value due to the atomic bombing.

Those feelings are especially strong at the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

But that’s not all there is to Hiroshima. There are terrific temples, shrines, parks, and a recreated castle. And the scenery of iconic Miyajima Island, just a short ferry ride off the coast, is not to be missed. The four nights I spent there were probably sufficient, but I would have shortchanged myself if I had spent any less time in Hiroshima.

My final stop of this trip before returning to Tokyo to catch my flight home was Nagoya. I can’t say that I thought Nagoya was a particularly thrilling city. Well, I could say it, but I’d be lying.

There are some interesting sights there, such as a recreated castle tower that you can see, but can’t enter because of structural damage due to an earthquake years ago. However, there is a recreation of a palace in the castle compound that you can go into. Its interior is stunning. And Nagoya has beautiful gardens, parks, a shrine, and an aquarium that are each worth a visit.

My three nights in Nagoya were enough to cover the sights I was interested in. Any more time, and I’d probably have trouble finding other sights that I wanted to see. If you’re in Japan and have spare time, by all means, stop in Nagoya. However, and this is just my opinion, it’s probably not worth lingering there for much more than a couple of days.

And that brought me back to Tokyo for one night to catch my flight home the next day.

The only thing left for me to do now, apart from boarding my flight home, is to figure out where I’m going to go next. I’m, no doubt, even more eager to learn that than you are.