Cherry Blossom*

29 March 2009
Today, for the first time in three months, we were cold, really cold; even when the sun came out briefly in the early afternoon the temperature never reached above five degrees c. At one point the sky became the colour of one about to snow.
We started the day at Tokyo Railway station getting our Japanese Rail Pass sorted and arranging our train journeys for later in the holiday, once all that was sorted we decided we should head for one of the museums where it would be warm – even warmer than your average Japanese toilet seat. But it was not to be – all museums are closed on a Monday, so we braved the weather and headed for the Imperial Palace, the geographical and spiritual heart of Tokyo, which can only be glimpsed behind its massive stone ramparts but its setting is very beautiful – surrounded by a reflecting moat and a large number of elegantly manicured pine trees. There is part of the Imperial Palace grounds that has been turned into a pleasant park (so the guide book says – we’ll just have to believe it because even that is closed on Mondays). But we did see our first cherry blossom as well as camellias and wintersweet – a welcome sight against the grey skies.


We made our way over to Ueno, using the train and our JR passes, to visit Ueno K¬oen, once a huge temple complex built on a hill now a vast park. Despite the cold the park was thronged with people because it is THE place to go in Tokyo cherry blossom time. The amount of blossom is staggering – a whole avenue of very ancient trees in full flower and the tradition is to bring food and picnic beneath them – and that is exactly what hundreds of people were doing, wrapped in warm clothes against the cold, eating, drinking and having a very good time. For those who hadn’t bought their own food there were stalls cooking and selling a whole array of foodstuffs – none of which we recognized but ended up eating something we can only describe as spicy bubble and squeak made into a pancake/omelette and served with a ginger and soy sauce, very tasty but difficult to eat with chopsticks.
In Japanese culture cherry blossom is an omen of good fortune and is also an emblem of love and affection, it also represents the coming of spring. Cherry blossoms are an enduring metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life – the transience of the blossoms, the extreme beauty and quick death, has often been associated with mortality and for this reason, cherry blossoms are richly symbolic, and have been utilized often in Japanese art. The flower is also represented on all manner of consumer goods including kimono, stationery, tableware and on the 100Yen coin.
As we said Ueno Koen was once a temple complex and there are still a few temples dotted around the park. The first one we visited was Kiyomizu Kannon-do, a beautiful red lacquered building dating from 1631 (very rare in Tokyo as almost everything was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake and fire). The temple is dedicated to Senju Kannon (the thousand armed Kannon) whose image is locked away inside the shrine. A little further on we came to a small stone-built temple dedicated to someone whose statue stands at the foot of the path leading to the temple. The aged stone statue was dressed with a red cloth hat and cape. Another temple/shrine was in the hollow of a hill and a series of orange gates which led to a few different shrines, each with statues of a dog like creature dressed in red and white bibs. More walking beneath the clouds and among the crowds bought us to the shrine of Tokugawa Ieyasu – Toshu-gu built in 1651. The path leading to the shrine is lined with hundreds of stone and bronze lanterns and the entrance gate is a riot of polychrome carving. All of the temples were totally incomprehensible to us being a mixture of Buddhist sects and Shinto religions (evidently it is quite acceptable to be both Shinto and Buddhist or Shinto and Christian) and had prayer boards tied up outside as well as paper prayers tied on to wire frames, long pieces of multi-coloured ribbon also signify prayers on behalf of deceased people. All had a gong, drum or bell which was sounded by the faithful as part of their prayers – which each person ended with a loud clap of the hands. On the hill there is also a huge bronze bell with an enormous piece of wood which is struck against it three times a day – this tradition has gone on for centuries. One of the most moving shrines, which we were able to understand, was the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace altar. This has a flame burning which was originally taken from the flames of the atomic bomb total destruction of Hiroshima by a young man who had gone their searching for the body of his uncle. He didn’t find him and instead bought home this flame and kept it burning in his home as a sign of vengeance against the USA. Over the years his vengeance subsided and the flame became a symbol for peace and reconciliation – it now stands as a witness of that terrible event and people are asked to pray/hope for the end of atomic weapons. It was a very moving and emotional place visited by people of all races and religions – although we didn’t notice any Iranians…

Like many huge cities that we have visited on our journey, the streets of Tokyo, unlike those back in the UK, are clean and litter free – it makes such a pleasant change and even though there seems to be far more street cleaners around there is just a general feeling of cleanliness. One reason for this may be the lack of pigeons – those disgusting creatures that foul buildings all over London seem to be virtually absent in many of the other major cities we have visited and the streets, buildings and statues are so much cleaner for it. Another thing we didn’t notice about Japan until we had been here a few hours – probably because it is so natural to us – is that they drive on the left hand side of the road, just like at home, in New Zealand, in Australia and in Hong Kong. The other thing which rapidly becomes obvious is how charming and polite everyone is and gestures are friendly and welcoming – it’s hard to reconcile this with the weird undercurrents that we know exist in Japanese society but that, fortunately, we have not come across. When being served in a restaurant (or even at a fast-food stall) the level of service goes way way beyond anything back home – but tipping is frowned upon . the one down side to the city is that half the population seems to be suffering from colds and is coughing and sneezing all over the place while the other half is wearing face masks as they travel around the city.
Our original apprehension about Tokyo has started to fade and we have managed to find our way around the city, we have eaten well – a number of people had warned us about the horrendous cost of food but in a city where almost everyone lives in small apartments, where there is little or no room to cook, there is a huge variety of restaurants in every price bracket from the upmarket Japanese restaurant we ate in last night costing several thousand yen to the take-away we had at lunch time costing only 500yen (about £3.60). However, whether we will ever actually feel totally at ease is another matter.
Sounding through clouds of flowers
Is it the bell in Ueno
Or Asakusa
Haiku by Matsuo Basho