Goodbye, Tokyo
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Our trip across Japan was coming to an end, so we returned from Hiroshima to Tokyo to spend one full day enjoying a cultural program that we arranged for well in advance.
The day started with a visit to Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum where we intended to explore a recently opened exhibition of Gauguin and van Gogh. A grumpy morning under grey skies, ready to break out with heavy rain any minute, did not predispose us for an outside walk, and spending an hour in an art museum in heart of Ueno park seemed like a great idea. Well, it seems that hundreds of Tokyo residents felt the same way that very morning – we were quite surprised by the long, waving line in front of the museum.
It was a rather small, but well organized exhibition, and the visitors moved in a never-ending queue from one painting to another. The experience was quite different from what we expected from a museum: no random wandering or line skipping, no crowds in the first halls, no long queues to the key works of the exhibition. Just a long, organized queue of visitors moving, waving through the halls. It took us an hour to slowly follow the queue and explore all the presented works, many of which lacked English description.
As soon as we left the museum, we decided to walk through the Saturday flea market, open at the central square of Ueno park. It offered an impressive exhibit of new and used objects for purchase, ranging from antiques to cheap pottery and clothing. The experience was interesting but not exactly pleasant, as the overall feeling of middle-eastern bazaar didn’t quite match the atmosphere of the park.
The first drops of rain forced us to move, so we went to Roppongi. When we arrived, it was raining with no sight of a relief, so we stepped under the rain, sharing one umbrella. In a minute we learned that one umbrella won’t save two of us from a heavy rain in Tokyo and soon stopped worrying about being wet, simply accepting it.
Walking around Roppongi under heavy rain was not exactly our idea of spending the afternoon. Although during our explorations we found a restaurant of Belarussina cuisine Minks, one of the least probable and rare finds during our entire trip. Alas, we had another place in mind for a lunch, so we simply walked by. After a quick stop at ARK Hills farmers market — it was tiny and didn’t match our expectations — we walked to Maison Landemaine, one of a few highly recommended bakeries in Tokyo. The Japanese take on French pastry was surprisingly different from what we experienced in other countries, so it was hard to tell why exactly it was special.
Meanwhile, the rain stopped. After lunch, we walked from Roppongi to Shibuya, slowly drying our shoes and finding dozens of little details that make Tokyo remarkably unique and recognizable. Where else you could enjoy your lunch in a company of a goat? Or order a cup of excellent coffee from a corner store with the barista’s bike hanged on the wall right next to it (we seriously recommend About Life’s coffee).
Shibuya, probably the most lively and hip neighbourhood of Tokyo, left us with an impression that one can walk around it for days and weeks, finding new and exciting things to learn about it. It is a quintessence of Japan, the unbelievable mix of ancient and modern, always moving forwards but ready to take you back in time if you step away from a central street to one of the side alleys.
It was time to wrap up our cultural program with a visit to Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, one of Tokyo’s neighbourhoods quite far from downtown. We were lucky to get the tickets a few months in advance for a specific day and time. We took a hour-long trip to Mitaka and submerged ourselves into the world born of Hayao Myiazaki’s imagination. Although you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside the museum, it totally worths a visit — that is, if you ever watched one of the Studio Ghibli’s movies.
We left the museum after dusk and by the time we came back to Ueno it was dark. We purchased our dinner in a Matsuzakaya depachika, as we didn’t feel like going to a restaurant. It was a good day to wrap up our trip.
The next morning we made a quick stop in an antenna store with souvenirs from various prefectures, picked up Momiji that we couldn’t get in a rush at Hiroshima station, and took Narita Express to catch our flight back to Canada.
