Tokyo Two

Our second day in Tokyo we went to Ueno, which features a broad open park area and a cluster of Tokyo's major museums.  Our destination was the Tokyo National Museum, which has a comprehensive collection of all kinds of Japanese art.   The museum is delightfully old fashioned, with 1930's Art Deco decoration and a air of mustiness.   I'm not sure what this telephone was doing here.

The museum covers all of Japanese art, from 12th century Buddhist paintings on silk to the present.  

This is from the 12th century:

Normally, I am not a fan of armor and swords etc., but seeing some of the swords in person made me think about how they were actually used as weapons.  A frightening thought.

And some intimidating helmets:

And what you can do with wild boar hair:

After the museum, we went wandering in the adjacent neighborhood of Yanaka, which was left largely untouched by the 1923 earthquake and the WWII bombings, both of which destroyed large parts of Tokyo.  The neighborhood is mostly low rise buildings, some old and run down:

and some are stylishly new:

The area abounds with Buddhist temples (and cemeteries); the cemeteries often feature impossibly old and twisted trees, often propped up with wooden supports.

In the evening, we went for total contrast with a visit to the Kabukicho area near Shinjuku, which is Tokyo at its most garish, with neon signs and all kinds of entertainments of a dubious nature.   It's called Tokyo's "red light" district, and that it is.  But it lately has become a bit cleaned up; there are even high-rise hotels in the middle of it, replacing some of the low-rise tawdriness.   And there is a Toho cinema multiplex, with their most famous star peaking over the top of the building:

A few of the sights:

One of the ubiquitous plastic models of food in front of restaurants:

This was a placed called "Robot Restaurant"; I think there was a robot floor show.

This place won the prize for the most over-the-top decoration:

It's some sort of mixture of Times Square, Las Vegas, and Coney Island, all done in a very Japanese way.   Unforgettable.