Taito City, Part 1: Yanaka and Ueno

Today I went on a lovely long walk round parts of Yanaka and Ueno, areas which make up part of Taito City, one of the more central parts of Tokyo. I was in Ueno when I went to the Tokyo National Museum on my first Saturday in Japan, but I didn't have time then to see much at all apart from the museum, so a return visit was always on the cards.

I started off at Sendagi Station and a lovely little park nearby called Sudo Park. It had a tiny red shrine, a hill, some wonderful mature trees, bridges and a big pond with some fish in it.

Then round the corner from there was Yanaka Ginza, a traditional mid-20th century shopping street with 1950s cafés and shops selling such things as fresh produce and antiques. As I walked along I could see that I'd got there too early in the morning for any of the shops to be open yet - some were closed and shuttered up still, whilst others had their owners in the process of putting their wares out on display. It was only around 09:30 and I don't think they open until 10 - something I'd forgotten.

From Yanaka Ginza I ascended a famous set of steps and continued down the road to the back entrance to the historic Yanaka Cemetery, stopping for a brief look at the grounds of a Buddhist temple on the way. I didn't stop at the latter for long, though, because it contained its own cemetery and whilst interesting, I was going to be looking round a much bigger cemetery very soon anyway.

Japanese Buddhist and Shinto cemeteries are very different to UK ones. Memorial stones are nearly all cuboid, set on one end on a base, though there are occasional variations, such as something more like a mini stone pagoda on a column. There are also quite often flat wooden sticks/ planks sticking upwards, with engraved or painted writing (probably names and prayers) and dates. The pictures below are all from Yanaka Cemetery.

Within Yanaka Cemetery quite a few well-known local characters are buried, including the last Shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa; I saw his tomb set within its own little compound, which wasn't open but had railings which visitors could look through. When I got there, an old man was standing by the gate, praying and intoning.

Within the grounds of the cemetery I visited Gokokusan Tenno-ji Temple, a Buddhist temple thought to have been established between 1394 and 1427, thus making it one of the oldest temples in Tokyo. The temple grounds were small but pretty, and contained a copper seated Buddha dating from 1690, sitting atop a base which has contained a charnel house since 1938.

After a nice wander round the cemetery, I exited via the main entrance and headed south towards Ueno Park, taking in some sights on the way. One of these was a giant Himalayan cedar tree, another was the area surrounding it. Filled with temples and shrines, it was very picturesque, though the temples and shrines I saw from the outside seemed to be closed to tourists.

Another sight was an annexe of Shitamachi Museum - the Old Yoshida sake store, originally build in 1910 in the Edo Period, then relocated to its current position in 1987. It sold not only sake but also salt and sugar. A really lovely old wooden building.

There was an interesting one-room exhibition/ display of the store inside, free entry.

On arrival at Ueno Park I used a public loo and noticed that the walls inside of the cubical were painted with an impressive mural of giraffes in the African savannah. While washing my hands I saw a sign declaring the place to be the the Ueno Toilet Museum! All the cubicles had a different mural of a scene from nature on the walls. It turns out that these were painted by students of the Tokyo University of the Arts next door to the park, the aim being to change people's traditional perspective of excretion as something dirty and negative to being a much more positive thing, bearing in mind the important role it plays in nature as part of the food chain. It said that the zookeepers of Ueno Zoo (which is within the same park) inspect what the animals produce every day as it indicates their general health condition.

After that unexpected experience, I walked round parts of the park which I hadn't managed to see before when here for the National Museum. There were several street performers variously juggling, playing card games, making things from balloons or singing, plus a human statue.

I came across a baseball field with a team holding a practice game - very interesting for me to see, and a novelty, as I'd never seen baseball face-to-face before.

From there I went on to an unexcavated burial mound, thought to be around 1500 years old according to clay images and earthenware found there. It was bare of grass and flat on top, with some stone benches for people to sit on.

I was getting pretty hungry for lunch by then, so I carried on out of the park, to be confronted by a street scene which for some reason struck me as being quintessential modern Tokyo; a huge pachinko and slot parlour on one side, colour, a busy crossing, high-rise buildings with shop, café and restaurant signs running upwards (to indicate what business is on each floor).

I came across a FamilyMart (a popular convenience store chain) and beat a path to their collection of chilled onigiri - rice balls with various fillings in the middle or on top - and fridge containing ready-to-go desserts. I noticed a type of onigiri I hadn't seen before called 'lachs ham', so I tried that, along with a small pot of creme caramel.

To be continued...