Dumping
our bags at the hotel, with six hours to kill we wander the streets
of Ginza and find our way to the forecourt of the Imperial Palace.
School trips all around. Here a party of white track suited kids run
riot; while a boys' school in smart midshipman style uniforms stand
stiffly as they listen to their teacher: the class system as strong
here as back home. The eastern gardens of the palace are open to the
public (though partly cut off as the remnants of the recent
enthronement of the new emperor are dismantled). Built within the
massive stone walls of the old Edo castle, they are a good
introduction to the Japanese love of landscape gardening, miniature
visions of wild nature.
It's
testimony to how much we loved our first visit to Japan that we are
back so soon. We grab some lunch in a traditional tonkatsu
restaurant embedded in a department store; luscious fried pork and
giant prawn in breadcrumbs, with lots of accompaniments: the local
comfort food.
Next
day, with weather much better than predicted, we visit Asakusa, a
very grand palace built at the turn of the 20th century in
French Empire style for the crown prince, and now a government guest
house, all enormous gilded halls and crystal chandeliers. From there
we walked through the Aoyama district, with its huge cemetery: the
granite grave markers stand stark in the winter sunlight, rhyming
with the narrow square tower blocks of the city beyond. This brings
us to the jewel-like Nezu museum, a light and airy modernist
building, designed by Kenzo Kuma and completed in 2009 set in a
steeply sloping strolling garden featuring those same eight views and
a very modern tea house where we had lunch. The museum houses a
collection of oriental statues and scroll paintings, the best of them
inspirationally spare in technique – a few deft brush strokes and a
whole bamboo plant appears.
This spareness is reflected in the
building and in Japanese interiors generally, which of course has a
huge influence on interior design around the world today, but here is
in a tradition going way back to the simple timber houses and tatami
rooms across the country. Our hotel room at the Millennium Mitsui
also reflected this. A compact but perfectly formed room where every
detail had been worked out, down to the smallest. (There was also a
toilet that opened up and whined every time you went past, like an
eager puppy that wants to play, and which had 12 buttons to operate
and an A4 size list of instructions!)
We
continued to the National Garden at Shinjuku, Japan's Kew, another
beautiful example of the tradition recently feautured in Monty Don's
series on Japanese landscape design. By then we had had enough
(walking over ten miles in the day) and finished the day with a
siesta and a visit to the Belgian beer bar near the hotel that we had
found the previous day. A late middle aged man sat at the bar with a
plate of salad and three small glasses of different Belgian beers,
which he porceed to sniff and sample like a wine connoisseur.
Slowly, slowly, sip after sip, for a full two hours before the salad
and the drinks were gone. Not a word to anyone: absolute focus on
the task in hand. Then a quick phone call – to the wife saying he'd
been held up to at the office? – and he was off.
The
third day was all drizzle and sleet, but we still managed some major
walking starting at Ueno Park, where we visited the le Corbusier
designed Museum of Western Art. This has a very comprehensive
collection from the early Renaissance through to modernists. Then
through the park to the Yanaka district: small streets and houses,
many temples, and the main shopping street, Yanaka Ginza, where we
had lunch in a local cafe. Then we hopped on the tram that runs
through the northern suburbs to Shinjuku, people watching as the
locals came and went, mostly on local journeys of a few stops. Old
ladies bent double with shopping trolleys; Saturday dads with lively
nippers that smiled shyly at us foreigners; track suited youths
sharing an instagram video.
An
early morning vignette. A very old security guard, well into his
seventies, in hi-vis uniform with a red baton (a common phenomenon
here) stands outside the entrance to a car park. It's a job creation
kind of job: he just waits until a car emerges from the garage and
waves the baton around ineffectually to stop the traffic. A young
girl, in a smart school uniform, probably no more than eight and on
her own, approaches: a secret smile on her face as she sees the
guard. She catches his eye and stops facing him. He smiles and bows
very respectfully to her. She bows even more deeply, then is on her
way. A little ritual that has perhaps developed over many weeks as
she walks to school, a little moment to brighten the day for both of
them.
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