Japan- the journal Day 3-4

Day 3
Our plan Tuesday was to shop for souvenirs early, then return to the park to visit another one of its attractions later.  When we’re on vacation, souvenirs are usually a last minute thought and a scramble near the end to find something for everyone back home.  This time, we thought we’d take advantage of our free-form plan and get that task out of the way early.  Ueno Park is just north of a bazaar district called Ameyoko.  We got there early in the morning as people were setting up their shops and wandered around looking at all sorts of wares.  The salespeople were uncharacteristically aggressive, but it was all part of the bazaar atmosphere.

After buying a few things, we headed out into the rest of the neighborhood for more shopping and to find a place for lunch.  We found these topiary pandas decorating one street.

At a pharmacy, we successfully managed to ask for allergy medicine and get instructions explained by the pharmacist in Japanese with a little help from a translation app on our phone.  I was experiencing some pretty uncomfortable hay fever symptoms, though I rarely have any at home that require medication.  Ironically, John spends every morning sneezing uncontrollably and suffers terribly from allergies, but he only sneezed once while we were in Japan.

You see some interesting things around the streets of Tokyo.

 One of the surprising things we noticed was the profusion of bicycles.  There were bicycles everywhere at all hours of the day and night.  Bicycle riders could be children or adults, elders, businessmen or women dressed for the office.  As we walked down the sidewalk, they would zip past on the side.  We always had to be aware of their presence so we wouldn’t be in the way of someone’s journey.  But the most surprising thing about the bicycles was that we would see them parked outside stores or at the train stations, everywhere, without a single bike lock.  In a city of more than 13 million people, you could trust that your bike would still be there when you came back for it.  A friend in Japan explained that bikes did occasionally go missing, but that it was usually a matter of late night bar patrons accidentally riding the wrong one home.

After lunch, we visited the Bentendo temple in Ueno Park.  Bentendo, Buddhist temples dedicated to the goddess Benzaiten (governing wisdom, music, water, knowledge), are popular in Japan, and the goddess is also known in the Shinto religion, with many shrines as well. The hall in Ueno sits on an island in the Shinobazu Pond.  We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here.

After the temple, we walked around the pond, enjoying the beautiful day.

We rested a while.

After all that walking, our feet were tired.





But that gave us the perfect opportunity to watch the boats and the people who inevitably paused in their travels to admire the cherry blossoms.

That evening, we had a call from my pen pal Harumi to arrange our meeting later in the trip.  Then, we tried a restaurant/bar we had spotted while out wandering earlier.  It was very close to the hotel, but there were only a few other customers, all Japanese locals.  It had very good food and wine, which were a nice finish for a full day of exploring.

Day 4




Since our day 5 plans included meeting my pen pal at specific point in the Ueno Station, we decided to scout it out first thing in the morning.  Our other plans included quite a bit of walking, so we braved the commuter trains and took the quick hop from Uguisudani Station near the hotel.  Most small train stations rely on the ticket machines to do the bulk of their ticket sales, so we used one, finding it fairly simple for English speakers.  Squeezing into the train was a little trickier, as they are absolutely packed at that hour taking people to work.  We quickly determined that we would not lugging our bags onto that train later when we returned to the station for our departure from Tokyo.



After finding our rendezvous spot, we left Ueno Station to explore more of the park.  Our goal that day was to visit the Kaneji Temple and the Hanazono Inari Shrine, but we wanted to seek out some of the smaller treasures there, too.  On our way, we enjoyed the scenery and the beautiful weather.

(You may notice the yellow striping on the pavement in the picture with the hollow tree.  Most sidewalks in the city also had these textured guides to help the blind navigate.)

We found the Hair Pagoda, where a lock of hair from the Buddhist Priest Tenkai is housed.  Tenkai had the favour of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

The Monuments to Wani the Scholar commemorate the man who brought “The Analects of Confucious” and “The Thousand Character Classic” to Japan from the Korean Peninsula.  His descendants became scribes in the Imperial Court.

One unexpected find was this totem pole.  It was donated by the Tokyo Chapter of the Lions Club. It is strangely made of stone rather than wood, and includes a tiger, elephant and monkey.

This statue depicts Prince Komatsu Akihito, a member of the Imperial family who became a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, served as a diplomat and helped establish the Japanese Red Cross.







The Kaneji Temple was a distinctive red building surrounded by a beautiful garden, art and the usual temple trappings.

This circular sculpted tree provides a perfect framed view of Bentendo, which we visited earlier.

Inari is a Shinto Kami who governs agriculture, fertility, rice, sake, tea, and more generally, success.  Shrines to Inari are all over Japan, but there was a particularly impressive one in Ueno Park.  We weren’t sure we were in the right place at first because Inari shrines are traditionally guarded by fox statues instead of the usual dogs, and this one appeared to have dogs at the entry.  We knew we were at a Shinto shrine of some sort, though because of the red-orange Torii leading into the sacred space.

This shrine had a series of them, adding to the otherworldly feel as we entered.  There were several points of worship within the complex, and there, we found our foxes.

Our tour of the park brought us back near the art museum where we sat for a while writing out postcards.  We wandered a while seeking a post office, then headed back to the hotel for a quiet night resting our feet.

More adventures in the next post.