Tokyo Day 1

Well Spring is well and truly in full swing. The cold is behind me, the Sakura has already bloomed and fallen and the new financial year is well under away. So what better way to welcome in the new season than…a holiday. Last year I missed almost all of spring thanks to a large amount of beamtime, the only spring I saw was of the 8 variety. This year with my group’s size shrinking, and the fact we have plenty of data to work with, we’ve applied for much less beamtime.

April is about the best month to be in Japan in terms of the weather. It’s not too hot, the rainy season hasn’t set in it is definitely the third bowl of porridge of seasons in Japan. With that in mind when my parents mentioned they wanted to visit I told them that April was the best month. So without further ado here is a little travel log of the week we spent in Tokyo.

As with nearly all of my trips to the capital that aren’t for work my journey started the night before boarding the night bus from Osaka. I’ve experienced these beasts quite a few times and it’s always a bit different, a topic for another post perhaps, either way they are by far the cheapest way to get to and from Tokyo for me and I’m now a gold member due to my frequent use.

One long and uncomfortable bus journey later and I was standing in front of Tokyo station, and it was finished. To backtrack it has been under renovation since I arrived but now it is all done. I must admit it does look magnificent a real blast from the late 19^th century. After basking for a while I descended into the maze therein to make my way to Ueno park.

I’ve heard many great things about this place, it’s the home to many national museums, plenty of sights of historic importance and also a zoo, admittedly I had no intention of visiting that though. Suffice to say I was very excited to finally get there. Ueno station on the Yamanote line is right outside so I had no excuses not to haul my bum over there, sleep deprived or not.

First impressions? It’s E.N.O.R.M.O.U.S. I think I don’t have too much experience of huge public parks to draw on, or I’ve been in Japan too long where large green spaces are few and far between, but either way I was really staggered by just how much open space there was. The park was established way back in the meji period as a drive for more public places of exceptional beauty, an idea borrowed from European countries at the time. Well good work Meji people you really nailed it.

Asides from monolithic Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo Metrapolitan Art Museum and National Museum of Western Art, amongst a few others, the park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna. Over 9,000 trees call it their home and as such it has become a particularly famous place to visit for 花見 (flower viewing) in early april. Most of the blossoms had already fallen to the ground thanks to a heavy storm a few days previously but there were still many out braving the early morning to lay down their tarps for festivities in the evening. Amongst them is an incredibly old Cherry blossom tree that is incredibly designated as a world heritage site.

After necking a coffee I wandered about the place in a bit of a daze. As you can imagine, this being Japan after all, there were plenty of shrines knocking about the place. The shrine to Benzaiten (A goddess of luck), which sits out in the middle of a lake definitely caught my attention. I wandered over one of the many bridges out to the shrine taking in the skyscraper dominated skyline that, for me, always epitomises Tokyo. The shrine is not so special but I guess it gets a lot of visitors as there were many people setting up Yatais (portable food stalls). I got talking to the lady who owned on such that was selling dried fruits and nuts. She was fairly impressed with the fact A) I spoke passable Japanese and B) I’d come all the way from Hyogo by Night bus and gave me a nice handful of dried fruit for breakfast. Language skill level up.

So as I mentioned earlier there are many museums and galleries in Ueno and the thing that impressed me most was the price. None were more than 600yen and some were even free. Having not long been severely ripped off at the Kobe municipal museum I was more than happy to see this.

I had to debate were to go a bit but in the end my inner science nerd won out and I went to the National science museum. What can I say, science isn’t my job it’s my lifestyle choice. That and it had a giant whale model outside so I was intrigued from the beginning.

A quick warning here. Whilst the exhibits are enourmous, informative, and well layed out there is also almost zero English information in the entire building. I was a little shocked by this given it is a national museum, but I have long come to expect this from Japanese institutions. That being said if you can read there is a lot of interesting stuff here, with a heavy emphasis on natural history.

The one weird thing I did get out of the museum though was how amazingly Japanocentric it was. One exhibit that really stuck out was one in which the indigenous vs non-indigenous flora and fauna of Island nations was compared. Specifically Japan, New Zealand and the UK. Now it is true that Japan does have a lot of animals very particular to it’s lands alone but as an outsider the way the display was set up almost made it feel like “Japan rules and these other countries suck.” This was also apparent in a section tracing the anthropology of human existence in Japan. One display said in all but words “The Japanese people are special and unlike every other race on the planet.” Maybe I’m just being cynical but it’s a little unsettling that these kind of messages are being passed down to children.

The next floor down however my dark thoughts were dispelled by a wonderful showroom full off old scientific instruments. If there is one thing I most definitely am it is a massive instrumentation geek. I love this stuff. Looking at old telescopes, seismometers and even a 1933 electron microscope really brightened my mood. A kind old man even stopped to explain a bit about the history of the seismometers and how in ancient times in Japan it was believed a giant catfish demon was the source of earthquakes.

The museum itself is absolutely huge. It is separated into two sections, Japan and global, each of which has three upper floors and two basement floors. Being a natural history museum a large portion of the exhibits were set aside for hulking great skeletons (some amazing dinosaurs in there), taxidermy models and, weirdly enough, a large exhibit displaying the intestinal tract of various animals. I was immediately taken back to my youth spending time wandering the displays of Liverpool museum.

Nostalgia aside this place is an excellent waste of time and money at 600 yen. I easily spent 5 hours wandering it’s corridors and I could happily have spent longer. What I will say is that I’m glad I got into Ueno and the museum early because by the time I was leaving around 3pm the whole area was incredibly crowded.

So there ends day one, didn’t really do much after I met up with the rents. Anyway look forward to day 2 some time soon.

Ja mata ne.

Strolling in Spring-time Kyoto.

Experiment, data analysis, sleep, experiment, data analysis sleep. Yeah the long silence is definitely due to the lack of much other than work of late. Not that I’m not enjoying it but it doesn’t make for very interesting writing. Other than that I have mostly spent my weekends on snowboarding trips or just generally hanging, but that's not so interesting. However with our final experiments of the financial year are over and I have my weekends back. Nicely enough this coincides with Japan’s most hospitable time of year. Spring.

So with nice weather and a bit of free time on the side it can only mean one thing. It’s adventure time. Or at least get the hell off of the mountain time. Fortunately Spring is also the time of year when many students are graduating and the Japanese Rail company run a special discounted ticket known as the Seishun Ju-hachi kippu (青春十八切符). This baby costs 11500 yen and grants unlimited use of non-express JR trains for 1 day. The cost gives you tickets for 5 days, or 5 people depending on how you want to split it.

So how to use this wonderful magic ticket? Thankfully there was an interesting event to get to, albeit all the way out in Kyoto. Armed with my discount pass and a few friends we headed out to a light up event in the Higashiyama district called “Hanatorou” （花灯路) . Basically, as per the Kanji, the streets were lined with little paper lanterns. Being a light up event we would need to wait until nighttime but with the weather being so nice it would have been a waste to not make a full day of it.

As I mentioned earlier spring is the best time of year in Japan, shortly followed by Autumn. I’d advise any one wanting to visit to come around those times. In winter it’s pretty damn cold and in summer…well let’s not mention summer. So after a good 2 hours on trains and a quick look around a nearby electronics store we set off to go for lunch in an area of Kyoto I’ve never been before. I can’t remember exactly where it was, just that it was north of Gion.

At any rate it was a gorgeous place for stroll. The streets where lined with many little boutiques and cafes and all other kinds of delights. I wasn’t so interested in shops and in fact our target was lunch. The said restaurant apparently had ‘Vegetables outside’. That’s it. Wonderful directions ey. Somehow or other we found the place, or somewhere like the place, and in my friends defence it was delicious. A lovely set menu of traditional Kyoto foods with lovely fresh vegetables.

After a meal like that there is something that is vitally important. Cake. We headed over to supposedly very famous cake shop close to the river. Famous didn’t cover it. Whilst the shop front wasn’t particularly big it was most definitely rammed. The quoted wait time to eat inside was over 2 hours. Not going to happen. The cakes however looked incredible. Shelves were lined with amazing tarts of all shapes and descriptions with some incredible fillings, sadly of course none of which were edible by me, damned milk allergy. Instead I just amused myself with the wonderful inconsistency of the namings and translations of the names from Japanese (for some reason they were translated to French or English but not both, and there seemed to be no realisation that Tart and Tarte mean the same thing).

Cakes purchased we moved on to do one of my favourite things in Kyoto, lazing about by the river. Now I know Ratty said “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”, but I disagree. Simply spending time by the riverside is good enough for me. The river runs the length of Kyoto and slightly to the east and is very aptly named. 鴨川 means duck river and there are definitely a lot of those and all variety of water fowl. The weather was fine so I could just kick back and do a bit of bird-watching, spring time means there is plenty of courting behaviour on display and watching Japanese Kites swooping and twirling through the sky is really relaxing.

 

Gradually the sun began to set and we progressed over to Gion to the start point of the lantern road, Yasaka shrine. We progressed through the grounds after seeing a short display from some Maiko, Geisha’s in training, and on into Maruyama park just behind. Within the park were of course many small paper lanterns lining the streets but there were also many other light up displays besides. On of my favourites was an installation from students of the various Kyoto art Universities. The artworks were created with the theme of ‘traditional light’ and were very pretty.

The total light up course was about 5km so we spent a decent amount of time walking down from Maruyama park to the end point at Kiyomizudera. It was a very nice evening and something I doubt I’ll see again, maybe. Either way Kyoto is such a cool place to walk around that bathing in the light ambience of lantern light only enhanced the experience, the nice weather helped a lot also. We finished off with dinner at a restaurant serving traditional and contemporary tofu dishes including ‘yuba’ which is the skin that forms of the top of boiling soy milk. It was an experience to say the least though I’m sadly not so great at pulling Tofu.

Well that's it from me. With the rents up from now I’m sure I’ll get a bit of travelling done and have something more entertaining to write about.

Ja mata ne.