Travel Day 4 - Ueno Park

Wednesday, July 21st.

Today we decided to explore Ueno Park, a large public park in Tokyo. The park itself is quite nice, with abundant greenery and shady walkways that are an abrupt change from the surrounding city. It also encloses other attractions, including several museums, shrines, and a zoo. We had previously purchased GRUTT passes, which gave us free or reduced admission to many museums and other attractions around the city, so as the day heated up we availed ourselves of the air conditioning in the National Museum of Nature and Science. There were some fascinating exhibits there, ranging from the very active geology and diverse biology of the Japanese Islands to the rapid modernization of technology in Japan during the late 1800’s. One of our favorite displays mapped out in three dimensions the epicenter of hundreds of earthquakes in Japan. The result mapped out the boundaries of the four geologic plates that are colliding around the islands – very cool.

After several hours in the museum, we ventured back out into the heat to visit the Ueno Zoo – also free with the GRUTT pass. It held a wide array of animals, including some unusual monkeys, some funny penguins, and a very cute red panda bear. One difficult thing about many of tourist attractions, including the zoo and museum, is that they tend to close around 4:30 or 5 pm, so we were still looking for something to do for the rest of our afternoon after the zoo closed. Completely by chance, we stumbled on a neat old Tosho-gu Shrine near the zoo. It was built in 1651 and dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. A long pathway flanked by rows of stone lanterns led up to the shrine, and right next to the shrine was an area for visitors to leave wooden placards with prayers written on them. Glancing over them, we were amazed at the number of languages and countries represented. A relatively recent addition to the shrine grounds is a memorial to victims of the atomic bombs. The flame that burns there has been kept going since it was started by one of the bombs, and was moved to the site of the shrine in the 1980’s.

For dinner, we took the subway to Omote-sando to find Hiroba, a Japanese health food restaurant that bento.com and one of our travel guides recommended for vegetarians. This was our first time navigating to someplace that was neither on a main street or had signs pointing to it, so we Googled the address and counted intersections from a train station. After walking through several narrow back alleys, we found it in the basement of a building called Crayon House. Everything but the restaurant was closed, but we had a lovely meal of tempura for Lauren and fish for Dan, before finding our way home for the night.