Day 27: Museums

After yesterday's debacle, I actually had to go retrieve my Suica replacement. I decided to go do that in Ueno since it was a straight shot for me, meaning I wouldn't have to deal with paper tickets multiple more times. Plus, there were still some museums I hadn't visited in Ueno Park.

After making it to Ueno, things progressed pretty smoothly. I had to wait in line for roughly thirty minutes, but it only took like 2 minutes after I actually made it to the window. So luckily, a huge chunk of my day wasn't eaten up by it!

Ueno Park was having another event. I actually am beginning to wonder if there's ever not an event there?

This time, it was a celebration of products from the Japanese prefecture in the north called Aomori. I took a picture of the mascot character Tsugaru-chan, who is the city mascot for the Aomori city Tsugaru. Cleverly, it's made up of crops grown in that area.

After that I stopped at a few of the shrines and temples towards the southwest of the park, Ueno Toshogu Shrine, Gojoten Shrine, and Kiyomizu Kannon-dō Temple. It's pretty crazy that these are all just a stones throw away from each other. Also, I learned that typically shrines refer to Shinto places and temples are Buddhist. I don't really have a source that directly says that so don't trust that completely, but here is a thread that goes way more in depth on the topic if interested.

All three places were pretty interesting. Ueno Toshogu was nice and quiet, but that's because you have to pay to enter the main area. Gojoten was probably the most scenic and has the classic torii gate tunnel. Kiyomizu Kannon-dō has a nice overlook but is rather small. It's probably worth taking a quick look at all three if you're ever in the area since they're all so close though.

It's always sunset by the time I am out and about this time of year...

Next, I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, which is right next to the zoo entrance. It has a paid exhibit but it seems like most of the rest of the exhibits are free to the public. Unfortunately when I visited, only 3 of the 7 free galleries were open because it looked like the rest were getting ready to open tomorrow. According to Wikipedia, apparently the museums has around 280 exhbits per year, which makes sense considering the 7 galleries in the Citizen's Gallery were only scheduled for a week each. From what I can tell on the museum's website, these galleries are used to exhibit work by artist groups, associations, and even students!

Here is some of the art I liked the most, in no particular order.

夏雲山脈 by 泰介 佐藤

The one above was from the 50th exhibition of the Taiyo Art Association (第50回　太陽美術展) but it's pretty hard to find any info about it. I thinkthis page explains what the association is? I think it's art submitted by Japanese artist and then voted on by a panel including French judges, like some sort of cultural exchange. Each year in November the selected works are then presented in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.

This next one is really cool and from "The 47th Exhibition of the Japan Artist Group".

遠い日の森 by 谷口 美智子

There was also this cool quilted piece in the "SHINGEIJUTSU EXHIBITION OF ART" in the last gallery I visited

THE EYE by 白田知恵子

So I was trying to look these people up to link their social media or something since it was clear to me that they aren't like famous people but are really talented, but it's like impossible to find them on the internet. I think part of it is a language barrier, but that can't be the only reason!!!

Anyway, the building the art galleries are in is pretty cool looking too, especially once it gets dark out.

Although I wish that phones didn't like auto-brighten things so much

After leaving the art museum, I moved on to the Tokyo National Museum which is more of a history museum. I decided to purchase the special exhibition ticket since I wasn't familiar with the topic (more on that in a bit). When I entered the museum grounds, I was greeting by a seemingly very popular Hello Kitty exhibit.

I didn't end up going there but it was a fun juxtaposition between Hello Kitty and the other things I ended up seeing like old art or samurai swords.

The Special Exhibit was about Haniwa, clay figures that are funerary objects buried with the dead at burial mounds in Japan in the 3rd to 6th centuries. The map below shows both locations and some of the more well known examples.

The coolest (to me) haniwa displayed were Warrior in 'Keiko' Armor which is a national treasure of Japan, a four sibling warriors. I think this may be the first time all five have been displayed together in a museum.

The national treasure!

Interestingly, one of the sibling warriors actually usually resides in Seattle!

The Seattle sibling!

I don't know how one of the five was chosen to be a national treasure over the others, but I do think that the stance of the national treasure is cooler personally.

Actually more interesting to me than the haniwa were the burial mounds themselves. Obviously the museum didn't build any, but threre were a few photos. I didn't realize that a lot of them had made it to the present day and are very visible in their neighborhoods. These mounds, called kofun, are often shaped like keyholes and can be very large. The largest are in Sakai, near Osaka, and called the Mozu Tombs. When you look on Google Maps, you can see the sheer scale of the largest (and see the large cluster of them too!)

According to this NASA article (??), the largest tomb (Daisenryo Kofun) has dimensions of 300 meters by 450 meters. That means it's area is roughly 30 acres (I didn't account for the non-rectangular shape!). Pretty crazy. It's especially crazy to me that it's survived almost 1500 years while surrounded by a city.

After the haniwa exhibit, I looked around a few of the other buildings. I saw some cool stuff like tachi blades, ukiyo-e prints, kimono, and screen door art. I didn't actually take too many photos unfortunately, but I did get one of this blade from the 1300s

One other cool thing I saw was Volume 2 of "Collection of Japanese Poems Ancient and Modern". This copy is from 1120 and the poetry anthology it holds is the earliest example commissioned by Japanese royalty.

It was also a little funny to me that the book was the only item displayed in the entire room. The context behind it though is that the book is a national treasure and the room, The National Treasure Gallery, is dedicated to showing a different national treasure on a monthly basis.

After that I grabbed a bento and pastry at Ueno Station and headed home for the day!

The salmon was pretty good but a little boney. The tanuki pastry was also pretty good but i felt a little bad eating it haha But it's not like it was made out of a tanuki or anything, just shaped like it so I didn't feel that bad