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Another photo that came out rather well from our canoeing tour on Lake Aoki…
While on the mountain biking portion of the tour, we took a brief rest at Suwa Jinja (諏訪神社) in Hakuba. We have a Suwa Shrine near our apartment in Tokyo too. The colors were changing at the Hakuba shrine, and the atmosphere was quite peaceful.
Kids’ Trips in Tokyo: A Family Guide to One-Day Outings and Japan for Kids: The Ultimate Guide for Parents and Their Children are two books we reference frequently while living in Tokyo. Both can be useful, but both are far from perfect.
Neither one is very good at telling you what you can do in a certain area. For instance, let’s say that you will be in Shibuya for the day. Without going through each book from cover to cover, you can’t figure out what the books offer on just the Shibuya area. The index in Kids’ Trips is a mere three and a half pages in length and is not organized by area. Japan for Kids has an index of seven pages, but it, too, is not organized by area AND it covers all of Japan so seven pages means the index is nearly worthless. If you look up a place like Takadanobaba (where we live) or Roppongi (a popular hang out in Tokyo) in the index of either book you will find absolutely nothing. Of the two, Kids’ Trips is more useful when trying to look up a place since you can use the map inside the front cover to sort of see if there is any coverage of the target area.
Both books are dated. Kids’ Trips has a copyright of 1998, meaning the information is at least 10 years old and usually more like 15 years old. The second edition of Japan for Kids was copyrighted in 2000, but much of the content goes back to the first edition which was written before 1992.
OK, so the books aren’t great, but they are sometimes still useful. For instance, we wouldn’t have known about NHK Studio Park without Kids’ Trips. A video from NHK Studio Park can be found at the end of this post. However, we followed Kids’ Trips‘ advice too much and went to Maisen, a tonkatsu restaurant, on the top of Tokyu’s Department Store. We had a great time there, thanks to the lively conversation we enjoyed with the couple next to us who were celebrating her 60th birthday. However, the food wasn’t that great, and certainly not Tokyo’s best tonkatsu as the guide suggests. I’ve had better tonkatsu at other places in Tokyo for less than half the price.
The maps in Kids’ Trips are pretty good, and the directions are generally easy to follow.
Both books are useful references and fairly essential if you are going to be in Tokyo for an extended period of time with kids. If you only choose one, I would make it Kids’ Trips. Even if you are only going to be in Tokyo with kids for a couple of weeks I recommend bringing Kids’ Trips along.
Next stop on our Grutt Pass tour of Tokyo was 国立科学博物館附属自然教育園. That’s a mouthful. It doesn’t get much better in English with “Institute for Nature Study, National Museum of Nature and Science.”
This place is walking distance from Meguro Station. If you are looking for an uncrowded piece of nature in Tokyo then this is it. We were even there on a Sunday afternoon (by far the worst time to visit such places), and it was still very peaceful. No more than 300 people are allowed into the 200,000 square meter area at a time which means you’ll have plenty of elbow room.
Linda and Ryan enjoyed one of the ponds on the grounds while an old Japanese couple ate a bento nearby.
The trees in this place are really beautiful. There are countless kinds. They were all still very green for us in early November, but the place must be even more gorgeous in late November when the colors change.
The view from Matsukawa Bridge (松川橋) of the Japanese Northern Alps (白馬三山) and the Matsu River
Another shot from Lake Aoki (aokiko or 青木湖)
Note that if you have a big screen you can see larger versions by clicking on the photos.
Mt. Fuji sunset from Shinjuku (Tokyo, Japan – November 3, 2009)
On a recent, extremely clear sky day, after rain and wind, I went to the top of Shinjuku to watch the sun set. It was marvelous. And yes, that is Mt. Fuji (in the upper right part of the photo) from Tokyo. The sun set on one side of the building and then…
The moon rose over the other side of Shinjuku…
And then the people came out to play…
Continuing from yesterday’s blog entry, the “Special Exhibition: Vision and Reminiscence of Edo – Masterpieces from the Takahashi Seiichiro Collection of Ukiyo-e Prints” was a lot of fun to stumble upon.
This next ukiyoe reminded me of another recent scene.
I didn’t take a photograph of Enoshima from the same angle drawn by Hiroshige in “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō,” but I did take one, below, on the bridge out to Enoshima (江ノ島).
And I took one looking back, to where Hiroshige did his drawing 180 years before, from the shrine at the top of the stairs on Enoshima. Much has changed on the landscape with 180 years of development, but you can still feel the ukiyoe if you visit the area on something other than a weekend or holiday.
Finally, there was another ukiyoe (浮世絵), below, that was very fresh in my mind. We crossed Nihonbashi (日本橋) in order to get to the Mitsui Memorial Museum just a half hour before.
It, too, has changed (and yet not changed) in the subsequent centuries–especially with the freeway being built right over the top.
But some things are still there, even if in a slightly different format…
How many other department stores have been in business for more than 450 years?