Tokyo is suffering through a heat wave. Hence, our partial day in Tokyo was dictated by the presence of AC. We started with Wagyu Burgers at the nearby Coredo mall (an exceptionally good full lunch for two was just $25) after some shopping and an iced latte at Motoya Express, then decided we'd see the neighboring Ningyocho district by taking the (slightly) air conditioned metro to the eponymous named subway stop.
Here our Tokyo Travel Guide assured us we would see a downtown neighborhood that has "been busy and lively since the Edo era." It was here that we visited a neighborhood Shinto shrine (Suehiro-jinja Shrine), with instructions in English on how to worship and miniature dueling frogs on a rock.
And while it did seem to have some of that old time Edo flavor, we (by that, I mean mostly me) began to wilt in the heat and humidity. A Starbucks saved us with blessed AC, where we had iced lattes and were able to sample an interesting sweet potato coffee beverage. We let the sweat dissipate while we planned our next move. We wanted to go to the Edo Tokyo Museum with its life size recreations of Edo period interiors, but it was closed.
We settled on the Mitsui Memorial Museum near our hotel, but took a taxi to get there. Here we joined elderly Japanese women in looking at Japanese art and ceramics from the 13th to 20th centuries owned by the famous Mitsui family. The kimonos and silk screens were spectacular, but no photos allowed. In this room, a young masked employee circled the room spot cleaning the glass panels. In one of the two rooms where photography was permitted, I was able to take pictures of a 1790 triptych of rooster, hen and mountains that were finely detailed.
This early evening, we take the bullet train to Kyoto.
No comments:
Post a Comment