Tokyo

Dave with some modern art in a shopping centre

After our skiing in Niseko we spent a couple of days in Tokyo. Last time we went to Japan we flew via Osaka, which was a slightly strange choice. This time I thought we would actually spend some time in the most famous Japanese city. It is a strange one, I can understand the fascination. We were staying near the Shibuya crossing, if you ever see file footage of thousands of Japanese people crossing a road, odds are it's this one.

It's a strange city, Tokyo, for a start it's massive.  I never really appreciated just how big it is, but you'll get on the tube for 40 minutes and then when you exit it's like you haven't moved.  You are still in the middle of a massive city.  London feels big, but if I got on the tube from central London for 40 minutes wherever you ended up would feel completely different from where you got on.  Whereas Tokyo feels very much like it's all the same, these massive concrete apartment blocks.  I have to say overall it wasn't an attractive city, I mean there are bits that are nice, and bits that have a different feel.  But there wasn't like there was this single skyline view that you could recognise, and go, yeah that's Tokyo.  I mean it felt like the most recognisable shot was the pedestrian crossing in Shibuya, which is saying something.

We went to the Edo-Tokyo museum, which is in a really cool, elevated building.  And inside there are all these scale models of buildings and towns.  It also had a really interesting section on Tokyo during World War II.  I really did not appreciate the scale of devastation from that War.  Everything I have learned has always been about the damage to Europe and really how much the eventual winners suffered.  I'd never realised that basically half the city was destroyed and 200,000 people were killed.  Though it seems amazing that Tokyo is still around, given that in 1923 it was also completely destroyed in an earthquake and resulting firestorm.  So in the last 100 years Tokyo has been completely rebuilt twice.  It's incredible that there are 35 million people there, and that it actually seems to function as a city.  It certainly explains the unbelievably ugly buildings.  For such a famous city the vast majority of it is really ugly.  But then I suppose they just needed to house as many people as they could as fast as possible.

View of Sensoji Temple in the midst of Tokyo

The other thing I noticed was that there weren't many parks, given that everyone seems to live in apartments I would have thought that there would be more green areas for people to use.  But all the parks seemed to be attached to either a museum, castle or cemetery, you couldn't just have a park. There also wasn't the same feeling of villages that you get in London, where there is a definite centre of the city, then each little area has quite a distinctive feel (at least in zones 1 and 2). In Tokyo all the areas feel pretty much the same, dense apartment blocks. This makes it even stranger when you happen across a temple or museum, since it really stands out from the surrounding concrete.

The park in Sensoji Temple with an arcade ride behind

You can't visit Japan without seeing a few temples. A massive complex in Tokyo is the Sensoji temple (near Asakusa), it's really popular. We visited a few temples, sometimes you just can't help it. And in each one I was struck by how much the people still follow the religion (?) I guess you would call it that, perhaps it's just more tradition. The cleansing, the clapping and throwing of coins and the praying. Coming from the UK to another country which is quite similar in a lot of ways, and yet in this is quite different. It was a bit of culture shock for me.

Looking over the village (and animatronic cat) in Fukugawa museum

There are so many museums in Tokyo, the issue is really travelling all over the city finding them all. We had a few instances where we struggled to find the underground stations, you somehow find yourself on a massive pedestrian walkway that you can't get off and is heading in the wrong direction. I think they need a few more signs directing people to the stations, they certainly weren't overly obvious.

Another museum we went to was the Fukugawa-Edo museum which is a recreation of a full, life-size, village from 19th century Tokyo (then called Edo). It's a tiny little museum, and we didn't see any English speaking guides or anything, in fact we had some trouble understanding that the ticket seller wanted us to stow our bags. But the museum itself has a peaceful atmosphere and apparently there are meant to be English speaking guides to take you around. We just got a printed sheet. The other thing to remember (in fact should be a given for Japan) is to wear socks that you can walk around in. Since here you can take off your shoes and enter all the exhibits (or houses). I really have to remember to not pack holey socks when I go to Japan.

Gate from Imperial Palace with Tokyo beyond

Of course a must see when visiting is the Imperial Palace, you don't get to see the bit where the royalty lives, they are very well hidden from the tourists, but you do get to see some of the old Palace. Mainly it's just a massive garden. There were some buildings scattered through the gardens, but you couldn't go into any of them. So a little different from most national castles in towns you visit. The gardens were nice though, good to get out of the bustle of Tokyo. We were also getting into cherry blossom season it seemed. There was one lone cherry tree blossoming and it was completely swamped with people. There were also pear and apple trees blossoming (which to my untrained eye look identical to cherries) and yet they were getting no attention. It was really all down to the cherries.

We managed to do a lot of museum visiting whilst in Tokyo, we also got along to the Museum of Contemporary Art, these can be a bit hit and miss, sometimes they are really great. This was a better than average one. I suppose I was expecting more East Asian artists, but there was a Spanish artist exhibition on at the time. If modern art reflects the society it is created in, then Spain has a real problem with feminism. Holy cow, it was like every second piece was exploring woman's role in Spanish society, or machismo, or discrimination, man it was a bit overwhelming. Glad I'm not a woman in Spain, if that art is reflective of their attitude towards them, because man they have problems. The art itself was pretty cool though, and there were some pieces by Japanese artists.

Prada building - just one of many awesome buildings

One of the highlights of the trip was this little self-guided walk we did through the Harajuku district. It borders Shibuya, and it's like a completely different world. Shibuya is totally overwhelming with the number of people, and then you go one street over, and you are in this completely calm, but still very lively, area. Oh it was so nice, when you imagine Tokyo I think Harajuku is what you are picturing, just shops and restaurants, and bars and people strolling along. But with lots of colour and weird things in the windows.

The self-guided walk was all about architecture, perhaps the other good thing about having to constantly rebuild your city is that there aren't any Grade II listed buildings which need to be maintained. So if a rich company wants to create a flagship store, they seem to generally start from scratch, plus they also seem to be a lot more willing to try crazy things. Ever couple of hundred metres there would be another great building. I'm normally fairly indifferent to architecture, but these buildings really changed my mind about it.

Another highlight was the Asakura Museum of Sculpture. It's the artist Asakura Fumio's house (he's dead now), originally it was his workplace and school and now it's a museum of both his sculptures and his house. He had a great house, centred around this courtyard, which is basically just a pond, filled with light and his sculptures. Definitely worth a visit.