Today we left our hotel in Tsukiji and joined the other OAT folks at the hotel in Asakusa. Our tour leader told us that today was day 2 of a huge festival in Asakusa called Sanja Matsuri where groups of people parade on the streets with portable Shinto Shrines. One of the little parades crossed in front of our taxi, and the driver said he had lived in Tokyo his whole life and never seen the festival. So that was fun.
We dropped our bags at the hotel and headed off to visit Ueno Park - one of the highly recommended destinations in the city. It is a huge park - with a lake, a zoo, and LOTS of museums.
We arrived by bus, and saw a whole street of little vending machines selling toys and candy! Wow!
We started out our visit to the park by visiting the Tokyo Museum of Western Art, which is part of a Le Corbusier World Heritage site for architecture. We walked around and got a good view, but decided not to go in.
We then went to the Tokyo National Museum, which had a special Samurai Exhibition from the Maeda Foundation - one of the old families that had ruled and collected artifacts for hundreds of years. The exhibits included samurai warrior armor and weapons, kimonos, and many ancient scrolls and paintings. It was really interesting to understand the relationship between the samurai and the people they ruled and led.
Next we went to see the National Treasures Exhibit - mostly Buddhist artifacts from the 7th and 8th centuries. So cool.
We had a lovely lunch on a shady rock eating Japanese sandwiches from a food truck. :-)
Our last building of the museum was the Japanese collection - we visited the second floor which gave a chronological history of Japanese art and craft evolution. It was really interesting to see how the arrival of different religious traditions affected artwork (mostly scrolls).
We left the museum and headed across the park - enjoying all of the people out enjoying the beautiful Saturday afternoon. We briefly stopped at the lake - mostly full of lotus plants - and then got a taxi back to our hotel.
We settled in for a bit. Around 6 pm, went for a walk, where we encountered many groups of revelers carrying small shrines down the street - with drums and music, and some team rivalry. It was really fun seeing so many people out enjoying the rituals. There are supposed to be 100 different groups parading around the districts - but six of them were right by our hotel (they used the bathroom in our hotel to change into their costumes). It was fun being in the heart of it - the drumming is still going on now (about 8:30 pm)
We found our tour leader and chatted a bit. She recommended a low key ramen place a few blocks away. Despite being on the main road, it was a tiny hole in the wall place- the opposite of the one we ate in last night. It reminded me of the noodle shop in the movie Tampopo! So cool - and delicious!
It was a very full day. And tomorrow we start our tour!
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