This walking street near Ueno Station in Tokyo is crowded with people looking for a good dinner and a good time on a Saturday night. A great place to spend my final night in Tokyo before heading to Kyoto the next day.
I have been taking a lengthy, unwelcome break from editing photos due to a contorted muscle in my hip that makes a nearby nerve unhappy, the result being eye-opening pain in my left leg. For those interested, the malady is called piriformis syndrome. Although I am still struggling with this miserable affliction, I have decided to get back to working on the folder brimming with photos from my October trip to Japan.
On my third day in Tokyo, I woke up to a beautiful sunny morning. I decided to walk the two kilometers to Senso-ji, a venerable Buddhist temple founded some 1700 years ago, and the one of Tokyo’s premier tourist attractions that was in easy walking distance from my hotel. I set out shortly after 7:30am with my camera and Google Maps’ directions on my phone to stroll through the Taito City district of Tokyo.
The part of Taito City that I saw was a pleasant but rather non-descript urban residential area. The term “non-descript” is not intended as a criticism; it simply notes that the area had none of the urban glitter that Tokyo is famous for, nor was it an area with lots of traditional architecture that took me back to a distant past. The streets were lined with simple … and perhaps this is a better choice of words … unremarkable low rise buildings that people lived in. The streets and sidewalks were spotlessly clean and adequate, but not expansive; there were very few trees or greenery along the way. In short, Taito City appeared to be a no-frills neighborhood that had a lot of people living together in a limited amount of space.
About halfway to Senso-ji, I came across Matsuba Park, a bit of green space with some shade, some benches, and a small playground area for kids. Nothing fancy, but pleasant nonetheless. There was an information board in the park explaining that Matsuba Park was part of the municipal planning response to the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. City officials noted that green spaces and parks in the city acted as firebreaks that helped to control the fires that ravaged Tokyo after the earthquake. This small park is one 52 parks Tokyo built in the aftermath of the earthquake to help contain the spread of large fires, and to improve quality of life in neighborhoods throughout the city.
Matsuba Park on a quiet morning.
Japan’s capital city only took on the name Tokyo in 1868 during the reign of the Emperor Meiji. For those interested in such things, in the written Japanese language Tokyo is 東京, two characters originally from Chinese that mean in that language “eastern capital.” This name compliments the names of two important Chinese cities: 北京 (Beijing, northern capital) and 南京 (Nanjing, southern capital). Be that as it may, prior to 1868 Tokyo was named Edo, the city that served as the seat of government for the Tokugawa Shogunate that ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration began after Emperor Meiji ascended to the throne in 1867.
The resting place of the Tamagawa brothers in Tokyo.
As I walked through Taito City, I came across one traditional building secluded behind a gate that reminded me of Tokyo’s long history. This quiet site houses the tombstones and graves of two brothers whose engineering work on behalf of the Shogunate in 1653 helped to alleviate water shortages in Edo. In recognition of their contributions, the Shogunate awarded the brothers a small parcel of land and gave them an honorary surname. After the brothers passed away towards the end of the 17th century, they were laid to rest at this site. The original structure was destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake; the building pictured here is a reconstruction. The plaque in front of the gate, with its brief introduction to the Tamagawa brothers, contains another, and I suspect unintended, reminder of Japan’s history. The municipal government provisionally designated the building a historic site in 1924; it was not until 1955 that the designation was formalized.
As I got closer to Senso-ji, houses and apartment building began giving way to more street-level commercial buildings and activity. I would arrive at the temple soon.
Everywhere you look in Akihabara Electric Town, there are shops large and small selling manga and anime——animations, comics, books, videos, drawings, games, dolls, and an endless assortment of anime paraphernalia. I know virtually nothing of manga or anime beyond the fact that they exist and are very popular with people a lot younger than I. That said, I enjoyed walking around to see what was on offer. Tokyo’s electric town also has Bic Camera, a five story emporium dedicated to every kind of electronics imaginable. The floor devoted to photography was downright astonishing. It took an act of will to escape with my bank account intact.
My Vietnam Airlines flight to Tokyo (Narita) left Da Nang at just past midnight on 8 October and arrived at 7:30 the same morning. There is a two hour time difference between Japan and Vietnam; flight time was roughly five and a half hours. Narita is some distance from Tokyo, and there are a number of options for covering the distance. Taxi or car service would have busted my trip budget before I checked into my hotel, so they were out. My choices boiled down to an express train taking 50 minutes for around $20 or a limited express train (i.e., a train that makes several fewer stops than a local train) taking about an hour and fifteen minutes and costing about $7.
I opted for the $7 ride, first because I am cheap about expenses like this, and second, during a trip to Japan I would rather spend my money on sashimi than spending an additional $13 to save 25 to 30 minutes on a train ride. A third not unimportant consideration: Whichever train I chose, I would be arriving at my destination in Tokyo a bit before 10:30am and check-in time at my hotel was 3pm. Three o’clock? A bit late in the day for a check-in time, don’t you think? But all of the three hotels I booked in Japan had check-in at 3pm and check-out at 10am. And the place in Tokyo would not cut me even a little slack. Four and a half hours wandering around the hotel’s neighborhood on a couple hours of sleep after an all-night plane ride made for one grumpy curmudgeon by the time 3pm rolled around.
By the way, have I mentioned it was raining? I have lived almost 35 years in East and Southeast Asia, and this was my first visit to Japan. Rain on the first day of that long-awaited visit was definitely not on my wish list. It was not a hard driving rain, but it was hard enough that I used an umbrella, among various reasons, because I didn’t want my new, well-engineered, expensive, water-resistant but not waterproof camera directly exposed to the rain as I walked around waiting for check-in time for my hotel room to roll around. And just to dot this particular “i”, holding a camera and composing a photo while juggling an umbrella is not really my idea of a good time. Grumpy curmudgeon indeed.
It rained on my second day in Tokyo as well. Though after that, with the exception of a bit of drizzle in Kyoto, the weather for my remaining 13 days in Japan was lovely.
South Station at the intersection of South St. and Atlantic Ave is one of Boston’s many landmark buildings. I took several photos that show more of the building, but none of them are worth posting, so I stuck with this image of the main entrance to the station. The entrance way today looks much as it did when South Station first opened in 1899. Completing this representation of urban America in 2022 is the ubiquitous homeless person with her worldly goods on a cart to the left of the center entrance. In a country as rich as the United States, there is just no excuse for the legions of indigent homeless trying to eke out an existence in our cities. You are a disgrace, America.
