Tag: Tokyo

Tokyo Side Trip: Kawagoe

Kawagoe is less than 1 hour away from Tokyo on the Tobu-Tojo Line which leaves from Ikebukuro Station.  Kawagoe is famous for many old merchant houses many of which are still in use today.  Many have been turned into sweets and souvenir shops.  Some people dress in the style of the Edo period and walk the streets.  The main activity here is to walk the narrow streets and eat your way through the different food and confection shops.  There are a few old coffee and tea shops like Shimano Coffee or Shimano Tea that are great for a rest stop of Vienna coffee or tea and sandwiches.  Also made in the Kawagoe is Coedo Beer which is being imported to the U.S. in limited quantities.  Tourist booklets will direct you to take a bus to the main sights but it is best to walk since you will be consuming many calories along the way!  Exiting the East side of JR Kawagoe Station you can walk through the Atre building and cross SanbanMachi (street) into a narrow shopping street with the Crea Mall sign above it.  It is a long path with many food, drink and shopping diversions and will take you right to the area where all the old buildings are (Nakacho or Sawaicho area) .  The center of all the tourist traffic is the Toki no Kane tower.  By the middle of the day on weekends or holidays it is very hard to walk on the streets as they are narrow and full of people.  If you want to take pictures and see less crowds it is best to go early in the morning.  As far as shopping targets go, I found some really nice leather and canvas bags at a shop right near the tower and their a tons of candy shops selling a huge assortment of very beautiful hard candies.  They are arranged in elegant boxes and make nice gifts because of the different designs.

Tokyo Side Trip: Chichibu

Chichibu makes a nice side trip from Tokyo.  You can get there from Ikebukuro Station on the “Red Arrow” train in 1.5 hours.  The Red Arrow is a limited express with reserved seats so it’s a comfortable ride.  In warmer months you can tour parks and ride wooden boats down the Arakawa (river) from Nagatoro where there are beautiful cliffs and rocks.  Chichibu is also home to a number sake breweries and the Ichiro whisky distillery.  Ichiro has gained notoriety in World whisky circles and was completely sold out in Chichibu.  We were able to get a tour and tasting at the Bukou sake brewery.  They usually require advance reservations for tour groups of 10 or more but made an exception for us.  The house is about 260 years old and has a spring underneath which supplies water for the sake.  You can see the well inside the building and then drink the water from a spout outside.  Inside the shop, you can see holes in the timbers where farmers would place their cutting tools while they drank sake.  Around the town there are shrines and many old buildings.

The city is popular with lovers of anime as the city was used as the backdrop of a Japanese anime TV series called “Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day” that has also been translated for distribution in the U.S.  There’s one bridge in the anime that’s fairly unique in Japan so fans will make the long trek from the station. You can rent bikes right next to the station to make the trip.  Finally there is an onsen (hot spring) connected to the station (look for Seibuchichibu Ekimae Onsen) so you can bathe, relax and eat before returning to Tokyo.

Overall Chichibu is an easy trip to see a small countryside city in Japan.

W. Eugene Smith and Eugene Atget exhibits at TOP Museum

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness – W. Eugene Smith on his photo essay of the Minamata incident

I visited the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum which is in the beautiful Ebisu Garden Place complex in Tokyo, Japan.  The museum was exhibiting on 3 floors: 3F – Eugène Atget: The Eternal Inspiration, 2F – Photographs of Innocence and of Experience
Contemporary Japanese Photography vol. 14, 1F – W. Eugene Smith: A Life in Photography.  These shows run through January 28, 2018

On F3 you can see Atget’s beautiful images printed in the methods of his time and then printed in modern methods.  You then move through short but sweet collections of works by Man Ray, Daido Moriyama, Lee Friedlander and others.  F2 offered a nice break with vivid color work from contemporary Japanese (or working-in-Japan) photographers.  The W. Eugene Smith exhibit is huge, covering the major photo essays he did for Life.  It is exhausting to try to take all the images in in one afternoon.  The strongest story for me was for the Minamata incident involving industrial pollution by the Chisso Chemical Co. that ravaged a Japanese fishing community.  My son just studied it in his environmental science class so it was stirring for him as well.

I highly recommend this set of exhibits and TOP Museum.  If you are looking for a place to stay or just have a great breakfast buffet, the Westin Tokyo across the street is wonderful.  My suggestion is to have a breakfast buffet at the Westin, view part of TOP Museum, take a light lunch break in their 1F cafe, view the rest of TOP Museum and then have dinner at any of the fine restaurants on B1F or at the top of the Garden Place Tower (also called TOP); most of them reopen for dinner at 5:30pm.  Ebisu Garden Place is accessible from Ebisu Station on the Yamanote Line.  There is a covered walkway from the station to the complex.