Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Ueno Park and Nakamachi-Dori














Went to see a temporary exhibition on Corot, the French landscape painter, today at the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.  Sounds kind of funny, being in Tokyo, but I couldn't pass it up.  The exhibition focused on over 100 of his paintings, a large amount of the work came from the Louvre, in Paris, which holds a majority of Corot pieces.  It turned out to be a great show, but I couldn't take any pictures.  So, I'm posting about my walk home through Ueno Park and back to the subway home.  The above pictures are reminiscent of the torii in Fushimi-inari, Kyoto.  But, in fact they are in Tokyo. 














The light was really great at this time of day, creating some great passages of light and shadow.  This is the walkway to Gojo-jinja Shrine inside Ueno Park. 











Gojo-jinja Shrine, I arrived too late in the day and it was closed.  Still interesting to see.











The center attraction of this area of the park is Benten-do Temple, which is dedicated to Benzaiten, the Buddhist goddess of the arts, wisdom, the sea and the protector of children.  The location of this temple is really interesting because it is basically an island in the middle of a large pond, with walkways to get to the temple.    















Picture of the pond and the city in the background.











Walking back to the subway, I had to cross the street and was just documenting my travels.











I then ran into this great street- Nakamachi-dori.  Full of people out on there normal evening stroll home from work or picking up dinner or just plain shopping.  This narrow walkway had anything and everything for sale- clothes, souvenir trinkets and food.











I couldn't resist taking a picture of these vending machines.  I mean, couldn't they just get by with one, instead of ten?  Hard to see in this picture, because of the poll, but these go all the way down the block.











The best part of my walk was this.  No even really sure what these are.  Looks like small fish or maybe even worms.  These were laid out on styrofoam plates on a large platform with all kinds of weird looking other 'food' for sale.











These, I know are definitely small fish.  A stall a few down from this one was selling pig's feet out of a cardboard box.  I opted to not take a picture of the pig's feet, but this gives you the idea of the veritable smorgasbord of 'food' for sale.  Imagine walking home from work and seeing this to pick up for dinner-  "Oh, don't mind if I do.  I'll take a pound of the small fish and two pig's feet."

4 comments:

Scott said...

A Coke from the vending machine and handful of those little fish would've been a snack for your walk home. Are you cooking in your apartment? What is in your fridge at the moment (I take it, no pigs feet)?

Tricia said...

Yes, would love to hear about and maybe see what you have been eating. I would finally lose weight if I visited Japan or China. Unless, I found a Mexican restaurant. Seen any?

JP said...

I'm jealous. Just the walk home itself is interesting. I still can't get over all the colors.

Jacqui Pépin said...

In the chinese restaurant I work at, my boss and coworkers snack on those dried fish all the time. I don't quite have the palate for them though.