Tokyo Day 1
I got here yesterday on time and the bus from the airport got me into the city by about 7 and I found a cab and got to the hotel by 7:15. Wandered out to get snacks and a light supper of noodles and came back and went to bed reasonably early. Today I ventured forth into Tokyo, learning my way around via subway and train. The subways are pretty easy to follow, with stations numbered and color coded, and, thankfully the signs are in both English and Japanese so it's not hard to figure out where you need to go. This morning I went to the Ueno section of the city, where there is a very large park full of gardens, shrines and museums, as well as the zoo. I visited one of the shrines, the Toshogu shrine which I happened upon as I was walking the park area. Then I made my way to the Tokyo National Museum. On the plaza in front of the reflecting pool that is just before the museum, there was some kind of festival going on celebrating the culture and food of Taiwan. There were lots of food stalls and vendors selling Taiwanese products and a live show featuring Taiwanese singers and dancers. I might have chosen to eat at the festival, but it was brutally HOT and I was not about to sit outside to eat under any circumstances. (It's not only HOT but also exceedingly humid. Five minutes outside and my clothes were soaked with sweat.) By the time I got to the Tokyo National Museum it was about 11:30 and as I was really hot and a little hungry, I stopped at the restaurant in the museum complex for an early-ish lunch. Everyone in there was Japanese so I figured it must be reasonably good! I got a chicken curry with rice and salad, which was delicious and it was a relief to be in the air conditioning and to down a cold drink. After my lunch I did the museum. It's a great museum, with a number of buildings housing all kinds of art, archeological exhibits and cultural treasures of Japan and Asia. In the Asian collection, they also have some interesting material from ancient Egypt, including a mummy dating from the 9th century BCE, which is open so you can see the body. Kind of eerie but fascinating! The exhibits about Japan are terrific. They cover art, poetry, military history and artifacts, costumes (some amazing kimonos!), calligraphy, religious objects, even anatomical dummies from the 18th and 19th centuries showing the history of medicine and how Japanese medicine incorporated Western medical understandings into their own tradition of treating illness and disease. I wandered through the museum for nearly three hours. Given the heat, the best thing to do is to stay inside in air conditioning. Indeed it was so hot today that even in the museum, with the AC it felt hot!
After I left the museum, I took the JR train line to the Meiji Shrine. This is one of the biggest Shinto shrines in Tokyo, dedicated to the soul of the Emperor Meiji and his wife Empress Shoken. It's an enormous complex, set in a park area that is heavily wooded and makes you forget you are in a major urban area. The shrine very actively used by devotees who come for blessings and many, for weddings. While I was there I saw a wedding party having their photos taken. I also saw Shinto priests taking folks into one of the buildings for special blessing ceremonies. On the way in there are two huge structures, one comprised of large containers of sake, wrapped in straw, which is given by various sake manufacturers to the shrine as part of an offering to the Emperor and Empress. Just across from the stacked vats of sake, are large barrels of wine, also there as offerings to the Emperor and Empress. I went all the way in to the main shrine building, which was teeming with folks coming there to pray, and make offerings. Before going up to the shrine to pray, devotees stop at the water trough where they wash both hands and rinse out their mouths with the holy water that is provided there. At these shrines devotees can buy various charms that are believed to make a particular wish come true. Near the main shrine, there is a place where you shake numbered sticks out of a box, give the attendant your number and she produces a poem that is associated with that number written by the Emperor Meiji or his wife Empress Shoken. He wrote some 100,000 poems and his wife about 30,000 in a very traditional Japanese style. Mine was the following:
Ever downward, water flows,
But mirrors lofty mountains;
How fitting that our heart also
Be humble, but reflect high aims.
They encourage devotees to find meaning in the poem that is drawn for them, as it represents a message from the Emperor or Empress. Mine was written by the Empress. I also bought a little shrine object that brings good luck and productivity to scholars! The shrine grounds are quite enormous, so the walk through there and the visit to the shrine took nearly two hours.
By the time I was ready to leave it was too late to visit the Buddhist temple I had hoped to see today, but I realized that I was near a neighborhood that I had wanted to visit, particularly to get to a shop that sells Japanese folk art and crafts. I consulted one of my many maps and saw I was within walking distance of that shop, so I made my way over there and enjoyed wandering around looking at all their loot! Made some purchases! The store is on the Tokyo equivalent of the Champs-Elysees, a long, wide boulevard with lots of high end stores. The street was packed with people. By then I was tired and my feet were killing me so after my shopping spree I walked a few blocks to the subway line that runs to my hotel and made my way back. I'm so tired I'm not even going out for supper. Got some ramen noodles and will eat here in my room with my G&T and stay cool. My feet did not survive the day at all well. I'm wearing sandals I've had for years and worn all through Southeast Asia and China and Turkey, but today they were cutting into my toes, causing bleeding in a couple of spots and my feet were quite swollen. By the time I got back to my hotel all I wanted was to soak my feet in warm water and relax!
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