Thursday, April 09, 2009

Back in time - sort of

Tokyo has an uncountable (at least for an idle monkey trainer) number of museums scattered throughout the city. Last weekend, the Idle Monkey Trainer wandered over to one such museum, the Fukugawa Edo Museum. This is a rather modest musuem of a recreated Edo-era piece of town. The indoor, life-size model shows several typical buildings and streets as they would have been laid out in the 19th century.


Even at that point the city held close to a million people, about half of whom were samurai-class, in rather tight quarters. The above is a the typical room of a married couple (minus one wall). Volunteer guides are eager to escort visitors around the museum floor, offering a bit of history and quizzing visitors. Incidentally, during the explanation of this house, the answer to the guide's question about where they kept their underwear is not, "They didn't wear any?"


The museum comes complete with canal and boat (a main form of public transport on what was already "reclaimed" land.*) And, this being spring in Japan, nowhere is complete without blooming cherry trees.



Those interested in seeing a bit of the way Edo was, will find the musuem a short walk from Kiyosumi-shirakawa station on the Oedo and Hanzomon subway lines. Admission is 300 yen for adults.


Also just a couple minutes from the station is Kiyosumi Teien (Garden). The garden is full of large stones, providing pathways through the shallower portions of the pond and allowing up close encounters with what appear to be well-nourished but still very hungry koi (carp).
As with any pond or garden in Japan, there are also plenty of turtles, some balancing.
There is also an open space away from the pond which has an enourmous cherry tree and memorial for the Japanese poet Basho, with one of his poems carved in a large stone. "The sound of a frog, jumping into an old pond."
In many ways it is quite typical of Japanese gardens, but offers a nice retreat from the constant concrete buzz of modern Tokyo for 150 yen admission.

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