Tokyo Respite

One of the great joys of spending a year traveling is that you get to experience a country's seasons.  In Japan, I’ve found people love to celebrate the changing seasons through its flowers and trees.  In March there was the eager count-down to the cherry blossom season.  In April people across the country celebrated in festivals beneath thousands of cherry trees.  The fall will bring a similar delight in the bright colors of the maples.

Now the iris and hydrangea are blooming.  I have joined the Japanese in strolling through  gardens, looking at the flowers, sitting to enjoy the scene or picnic on the lawn.  

 

These photos are from a number of gardens in Tokyo, including the Imperial Palace East Garden, which has 84 different varieties of iris.  As with any occasion, the Japanese (like me) took pictures, with cameras ranging from smart phones to SLRs with 18” lenses.  

 

 

These hydrangea photos are  from a shrine and park called Hachimangu in the town of Mito about an hour outside of Tokyo. 

I don't think I've seen so many  hydrangea with so many varieties in one place.  The plants were mostly under a stand of tall trees.  It was all quite lovely, serene, and cool.

Mito has a lovely lake with a path around it for joggers and strollers,  a fountain in the middle, swan boats and real swans.  A lot of people were out, including this mother and son, whom I saw at the train station as we waited to return home.  (Another thing Japanese love is hats!)

Yesterday I went to the Edo- Tokyo Open-Air Museum, a collection of houses and shops from the early 1900's.  There the iris were gone, but dahlias were in bloom.  As I walked home from the train, there was a beautiful sunset.  I wasn't the only one taking pictures!

This is Your Spaceship Calling….

Remember those movies we saw of future cities on earth, with glassy skyscrapers and monorails and deserted streets?  Well, that’s what Odaiba felt like when I saw it this week.  The guidebooks describe it as space-age buildings, electronic cars, and fantasy shopping malls.  It’s really strange.

Oldenberg's "Saw Sawing"

Tokyo big Sight

 Odaiba is a complex of office buildings, apartment houses, malls, and entertainment venues built in the 1990’s on landfill in Tokyo Bay. A new, conductor-less subway line takes you there from Shimbashi, tucked under the upper level of Rainbow Bridge and nestled between the car lanes.  When you “land”, you are greeted with large buildings, some your stereotypical skyscraper but some not.  There’s Tokyo Big Sight, a building of inverted pyramids, which is an event space.  There are a couple of massive buildings with glass bridges joining the towers high above ground.  And there’s the Fuji Television building that looks like a giant erector set.  Decoratively placed among them is Claus Oldenberg’s “Saw Sawing”.  No comment.

Fuji Tower

Odaiba has its share of museums, geared to Odaiba’s past (it was a shipping port) and future (innovation).  The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, the only one I went to, was fascinating, with interactive exhibits on genetic research for cancer and other diseases; robotic arms you can manipulate to try your hand at surgery; the role of serendipity in inventions; etc.  The National Maritime Museum, built like an ocean liner, looked the most interesting from the outside.  There’s also a Port Museum and Museum of Maritime Science.

This is a corporate village, too.  Toyota has a huge showroom of its current, future and past automobiles, and you can see the latest in its electric cars.  In the Fuji TV Broadcast Center, you can see how television programs are made and go up to the observatory to see Odaiba and the Tokyo skyline.

Anniversaire Tokyo Bay

Big Box Stores

Odaiba aims to be a destination spot, which means it has a wealth of entertainment and shopping opportunities.  In my wanderings around the island, open-mouthed, I saw several mall complexes with all kinds of shops, even ones we have back home.   There are restaurants of every style you can imagine, a number of theme areas à la Disneyland, an onsen/spa, etc.  My favorite was a semi-European looking “Anniversaire Tokyo Bay” complete with a church, which I think is available for weddings.  You can see it in the picture here, in front of the huge Hotel Trusty and the Baycourt Club. 

I will say the Ferris wheel was great.  It was the world’s tallest in 1999; I don't know if it still is.  If you wanted, you could ride in a clear cab and see the ground below as well as the skyline ahead.

I went to Odaiba on a weekday, so it was fairly deserted, which added to the out-of-body space age feel.  There were large, wide avenues, grass, new trees, a pedestrian bridge, sidewalks and walkways.  From the Ferries wheel, I could see huge areas waiting to be built upon; they were either parking lots or grass fields (“a wildflower garden”, one said).  With the recession, they may wait a long time.

In some ways, Odaiba is not that different from the other large office/residential/shopping complexes I’ve seen around Tokyo, though the others are more refined in their architecture and not quite so over-reaching or Disney-like.  Both have wide green spaces and have a more open feel than “old Tokyo”.  But they all have a certain anonymity and lack of human community about them, quite different from the Tokyo of even 40 or 50 years ago.

Pedestrian Bridge

The contrast between the “old Tokyo” and the “new” Odaiba was quite stark for me.   The day before, friends and I visited the Shitamachi Museum, which is a reconstruction of Tokyo shops and houses from the early 20^th century.  It reminded me of other exhibits I'd seen of even earlier times.  In their 60's now, Mune and Shigeko had grown up in similar houses, so could explain a lot.  Mune talked about his family of five living in three four-tatami mat rooms and a kitchen.  Shigeko showed me where the futons were stored, clothes kept, how the kitchen worked, etc.  What was most fun was watching them play with the children’s toys on display.  Everything we saw there they had used or done.  Much is still true today:  drying clothes on poles on the balcony is a common sight, and even western-style houses will have a tatami mat room.  But that way of living is fast disappearing.  With Odaiba, there is no trace.

The really strange thing about Odaiba is that it is built on landfill.  One reason is that Tokyo has limited area for expansion, so building out into the sea can be attractive.  Another Japanese friend explained that, after Admiral Perry landed in Tokyo Bay, the government began filling up part of the bay as a way to shore up its defenses.  She said it took until the 1980’s before the land was ready to be built upon.  But, as she pointed out, it may not be the sturdiest of ground.  It’s in an earthquake zone.  And if there’s a tsunami, as many fear, the island could well be destroyed.  So here’s this futuristic urban complex, erasing Tokyo’s past while hoping a tsunami won’t obliterate it.  No wonder my head is spinning!

Tokyo Is….

Tokyo has so many facets to it that it is almost impossible to do the city justice.  I’ve traveled to many places in the city over the past two weeks:  to Akihabara, still electronics heaven but now transformed into an anime capital; Asakusa with a shrine that is anything but quiet or spiritual as the tourists flock to it; the posh Ginza area, and many others.  I’ve seen the Natural Science Museum’s park, deliberately kept wild as a research facility; the Edo-period Hamarikyu Garden, with a brand new building complex behind it; and the large Shinjuku Gyoen with its wide lawn that reminds me of Central Park.  And I’ve seen some oddities.   So, without further ado, here’s a collage of my Tokyo wanderings to date, with a bit of commentary about what Tokyo is to me.

Tokyo is old and new, as I wrote in my last blog.  The National Museum’s Horyuji Gallery preserves 7^th and 8^th century treasures like this Buddha in a lovely new building.  At the same time, the city is a mecca for contemporary art, in the galleries in Ginza and elsewhere and at museums like the Museum of Contemporary Art, where this installation was on display.

Tokyo is a shopping town par excellence, which is a bit lost on me since I am not really a shopper.  There are the very posh, brand name stores in Ginza and the new complexes springing forth all over the city.  There’s also Mitsukoshi, which opened in 1673 and I think is Tokyo’s oldest department store.  It’s like department stores all over Japan, though its lobby is quite special:  good food court in the basement; nice restaurants on the top floor; an art gallery; places to get your hair done, clothes cleaned and shoes repaired; and everything in between.  The typical old-style shopping streets still exist, arcaded or not, with lots of little shops selling everything imaginable.

Tokyo is beautiful.  It is constantly renewing and rebuilding – the 1923 earthquake and WWII pretty much leveled the city, and a growing population and desire for newness all foster this – so it seems fresh and new.  But it’s also beautiful in its parks and its sculpture:  here a fountain at the Imperial Palace Garden (the part that’s open to the public) and also the Bloomberg Pavilion at the Museum of Contemporary Art, another form of sculpture to me.

Tokyo is also not so lovely.  Sometimes demands of the new get in the way of the old:  The Nihonbashi bridge, for example, has had some of its lanterns cut off to provide for the expressway above.  I found the gold-clad and sculptured Asahi Beer Building a bit of an eyesore, but your taste may be different. That's the new Sky Tree in the background.

Tokyo is clearly urban.  Its buildings butt against each other and have lovely facades, though sometimes what’s behind is not so great.  I saw this building somewhere on my walks, with what looks like air conditioner cables dangling, waiting for a neighboring building to rise and cover them up.  Trains and subways are ubiquitous, a necessary and very efficient way to move people in, out, and around the metropolis.  Though the train in this picture isn’t crowded, it does capture the catnapping traveler and the cell-phone addicted Japanese (just like New Yorkers!).  I particularly liked this man’s socks, though.

Tokyo is a city that values nature.  Being close to nature, physically and/or in spirit, is very much part of the Japanese culture.  Tokyo is an hour or so from Mt. Fuji, and when it’s a clear day you can see it from various parts of the city.  As I’ve noted several before, Tokyo has lovely parks, which helps a lot since only the most recent housing complexes have grassy areas.  I particularly like these stepping rocks at Kiyosumi-Teien Park.

Last, and certainly not least, Tokyo is fun.  It has a sense of humor:  I was going along a walkway in the new residential/office/shopping complex in Shinbashi when I came upon this sculpture of three figures, perhaps sunning themselves, on a roof below me.  It also has various uniquely Tokyo specialties that are fun to do.  One is the “maid cafés” in Akihabara where young women, dressed as 19^th-century maids though in short skirts, serve you tea in an elaborate ritual.  Another, here with my friend Horie, is a “Monja pancake”, a mélange of chopped vegetables, seafood, sometimes noodles, cheese and a tasty sauce, grilled together.  Horie said that a much simpler version used to be considered “junk food” and was popular with the neighborhood kids.