Part 2: A capital time

A short hop, and by short I mean sleepless and gruelling 9 hour trip by night bus, had us arriving in Tokyo bright and early on Wednesday morning. Sadly there was no respite from the heat but the capital, as always, managed to blow me away with its impressive scale and supreme business. I managed to decipher the wonders of the Tokyo underground much faster this time and had us over to our hostel in Asakusa in good time.

Asakusa is a pretty cool place but I’ll come back to that a bit later because we had other places to be. Our first stop for the Tokyo tour was the Miyazaki Hayao Ghibli museum. Huge fan-boy that I am this has been on my to visit list for ages and now I was finally getting the chance.

The museum is way out in a city on the outskirts of Tokyo, Mitaka, and getting there was in itself no small task since we were practically the opposite side of Tokyo. Being  cheapskates money savvy we had purchased day tickets for the Tokyo underground and so plotted a course for Mitaka that allowed us to spend as much time on the subway as possible. This took a bit more time but you know, save the pennies.

Mitaka is itself not really a very attractive location. It’s far enough outside of Tokyo to not be dominated by lines of apartment blocks but it’s slender streets and mundane choice of building colour do give it a bit of a dingy feel. My mate also noted that there was a lot more rubbish on the streets and that it ‘looked like birko’ yeah welcome to Japanese suburbia.

As always there were no signs that were of any use and whilst there is a bus that runs directly to the museum we opted to walk. The websites map is decidedly unhelpful but it did at least indicate the museum was in a park. We headed through some of the winding side streets towards the tree-line in the distance. The heat was starting to pick up again and although we can’t have walked more than a kilometre it felt like forever.

Still arrive we did and I must say that whilst the museum is small it was also very impressive. The museum itself is a 4 storey building of just the sort of quirky design you’d expect from the ghibli team, all round edges, overgrown vines an odd little domes. After being greeted by Totoro at the entrance I knew I was in for a treat.

Inside it’s a little bit chaotic. Firstly it was pretty busy, I get the impression its like this most of the year. Secondly there is no real floor plan as such. There are various rooms and exhibits but they are not laid out so tha you can move from one to the next in a logical order. This is also not helped by the lack of a central staircase, apart from a weird spiral staircase in the middle. The décor however is incredible and you really feel like you’ve just stepped into the world of Ghibli.

The main exhibition room is essentially a history of animation, detailed with bright colours and some incredibly impressive moving exhibits. We once again hit a snag though. Shockingly not a single exhibit in the museum had a translation. Whilst they were in fairly basic Japanese, fine for me, you would miss out on a lot if you couldn’t read, so a bit naff for my friend. This really surprised me given the wide appeal of the films. There was a second exhibit further up that I really didn’t understand. I think it might have been something to do with how Ghibli artists where influenced by European fairy tales maybe? The Japanese was just way beyond me.

The highlights were definitely the wonderful reconstructions of sketches and storyboards of the various films and of course the Saturn theatre. Throughout the day this little theatre screens short films that are only aired within the museum. If I understand correctly they are different each day, I guess as a kind of incentive to go back.

We watched one called, 星をかった日(which could mean the bay I bought, raised or harvested a star depending on how its read.) The story was fairly basic; boy runs away from home, moves in with random older lady, works on her farm, swaps turnips for a weird seed from a mole and a frog, normal stuff really. The visuals and music however where stunning as always. The art direction is based around works by Naohisa Inoue in his Iblard collection, worth a google if you like quirky fantasy art. I think there is a whole other world there just waiting to be explored and I loved the seamless blending of old clapped out technology with a super futuristic city.

This all took a good few hours and by the time my we got back to the hostel my mate was knackered. I decided to have a short wander around the local area since I’d not been to Asakusa before and I’d heard it was home to the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo, senso-ji. It apparently used to be the most popular entertainment district in Tokyo before being levelled in WWII. These days it has more of a reputation for being an excellent site of budget accommodation.

Not having any real plan beyond getting to the temple I just went for my usual plan of wander in the general direction and see what I see. Man am I glad I did. As I strolled past a random supermarket I spotted out of the corner of my eye something I’d been searching for since I arrived in Japan. A square watermelon. These badboys will set you back a whopping 10000yen (about £82) and well they just look weird. I’d actually doubted their existence but can now confirm they are a reality, albeit a fairly pointless one.

Marking the entrance to Senso-ji is the equally, if not more, famous Kaminarimon, or thunder gate. The giant red gate, originally built in the 10^th century stands at a whopping 11.7m and is nearly that wide, not your average garden gate. It is home to 4 statues including two very impressive busts of Rajin and Fujin (Gods of Thunder and wind respectively). At the centre of the gate is a giant paper lantern (almost 4m in height), which has an elegant dragon carving on its underside.

Wading through the throngs of tourists I wandered down nakamise-dori, a short street that is jam-packed full of shops selling all kinds of wonderful souvenirs and traditional snacks. I’d have loved to spend a bit more time poking my nose about but I wanted to see the main temple itself. The first thing that caught my eye was the five-storey pagoda on my left. These are common amongst large temples but it was my first time seeing one up close. Actually after the gate the temple ground itself weren’t anything special. I guess I’m a little templed out these days.

The next day saw us heading just one stop over on the metro to Ryogoku home of Japan’s main sumo stadium, Ryogoku Kokugikan, and also the Edo-Tokyo museum. Both buildings are right next to the train station, always handy in the summer heat, and are also massive. We picked up our tickets for the Edo museum but first headed to the Ryogaku to have a look at the Sumo museum.

The ‘museum’ turned out to be a single room that consisted mainly of images of old trainers and Yokozuna. Again almost no English in here so we didn’t take too much away from it, but it was free so I can’t complain too much.

Our next destination on the other hand was absolutely incredible. Firstly it is massive as I stated earlier but to give you an impression I’ll give you some figures. It stands at about 62.2m above the ground and covers an area of 30,000 square metres. Adding to this is the fact it is modelled after an old elevated type warehouse so most of the museum is about 30m above ground level.

 

The inside is where the main event is of course. Whilst the exhibits only take up about two floors there is quite a lot packed in as the museum maps the course of Edo’s progression from being a port town to becoming the modern capital it is today. There are many old artefacts as well as intricate models and reconstructions of various important landmarks within the city. The full size model of a kabukiza and the northern portion of the Nihonbashi bridge definitely stand out amongst them.

What makes the museum all the more fantastic is that a lot of care has gone into translation here. The information is displayed in Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese, Korean and a host of other languages. Further to this there are volunteer guides happy to show you round and providing explanations in several languages. It is easy to lose time in here and we must have spent at least 3 or 4 hours, my mind was sufficiently warped after this information overload.

 

After a bit of a history lesson I took my friend to the Harajuku area to get a good look at the more modern, trendy aspects of Tokyo. We wandered through the boutique-lined streets, taking in some of the more unusual styles as we went. Afterwards we turned back down into central Shibuya just in time for rush hour at scramble crossing. Very few times in my life have I seen so many people in one place. Its worth a look if for nothing more than curiosity. 

We just about managed to squeeze in some nighttime skyscraper viewing in Shinjuku before what was one of the more stressful nights of travelling back to Osaka.

Ja mata kondo ne.