Japan 2023

February 15th, 2023

Final­ly the weath­er became bet­ter. Here the view from our hotel room at dawn.

Today we made a trip to the Mei­ji Shrine in Shibuya. On the way there, we crossed a large park and dis­cov­ered the first flow­er­ing trees. We are still divid­ed whether it are real­ly already cher­ry blos­soms or plum blos­soms - it does not mat­ter, it was beau­ti­ful to look at. Espe­cial­ly worth see­ing was also the wildlife in the trees. Bright green par­rots (col­lared para­keets) were sit­ting in them, enjoy­ing the blos­soms. This made a great col­or con­trast with the blue sky in the back­ground. How good that I had tak­en my 100-400 zoom with me.

Mei­ji-jingū Shrine (Japan­ese 明治神宮 Mei­ji­jingū), locat­ed in Tokyo’s Shibuya dis­trict in Japan near Hara­juku Sta­tion, is a Shin­tō shrine ded­i­cat­ed to the souls of Mei­ji-ten­nō and his wife Shōken-kōtai­go. The Mei­ji-ten­nō, on the oth­er hand, is buried at Fushi­mi-momoya­ma in south­ern Kyō­to. The shrine belongs to the Choku­saisha. Choku­saisha (jap. 勅祭社; full title: 勅使参向の神社, chokushi sankō no jin­ja) are Shin­tō shrines enti­tled to a chokushi (勅使), a spe­cial emis­sary of the Ten­nō at par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant fes­ti­vals. There are few of these in Japan. The Mei­ji-ten­nō died in 1912, his wife in 1914.

After her death, the shrine to their wor­ship was built in the pop­u­lar archi­tec­tur­al style of nagare-zukuri ( 流造) on land first giv­en to Gen­er­al Katō Kiy­omasa (1562-1611) and lat­ter­ly a sec­ondary res­i­dence of Ii Nao­suke, who served as chan­cel­lor to the Toku­gawa. Con­struc­tion began in 1912 and was com­plet­ed in 1920. The con­struc­tion cost had been 20 mil­lion yen, most of which came from dona­tions. The shrine was ded­i­cat­ed on Novem­ber 1st, 1920. This day is con­sid­ered the anniver­sary of the shrine, which also hosts the Great Autumn Festival.

Sake bar­rels stacked on top of each oth­er are often found at Shin­tō shrines. Sake (Japan­ese 酒 [sakɛ]) is an alco­holic bev­er­age brewed from pol­ished rice. The clear or whitish-cloudy bev­er­age con­tains about 15-20 per­cent alco­hol by vol­ume. Sake plays an impor­tant role in the reli­gious beliefs of the Japan­ese. The country’s tra­di­tion­al bev­er­age was once even called “divine wine” accord­ing to the writ­ten char­ac­ters. Since rice wine is need­ed to per­form rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals, sake brew­eries reg­u­lar­ly donate to shrines.

How­ev­er, the stacked bar­rels at the shrines are emp­ty dec­o­ra­tive ves­sels called kazari­daru (飾り樽, Engl. “dec­o­ra­tive bar­rel”). Their dona­tion serves a sym­bol­ic pur­pose. Homage is paid to the gods and a request is made for con­tin­ued good yields.

The last Mei­ji-ten­nō oroien­tat­ed him­self increas­ing­ly west­ern and appre­ci­at­ed west­ern food and also wines. For this rea­son, the Mei­ji Shrine also con­tains a col­lec­tion of wine bar­rels (pre­sum­ably also emp­ty) donat­ed from the French Bour­gogne region.

On the way back from Mei­ji Shrine, we made anoth­er stop in Shibuya in now nice weath­er and took some more pho­tos of the busy crossing.

The famil­iar inter­sec­tion was now much more crowd­ed than it had been on our first vis­it in the rain.

After the stop in Shibuya, we went to the Tokyo Skytree. The Tokyo Skytree (Japan­ese 東京スカイツリー, Tōkyō Sukait­surī) is a 634 meter high tele­vi­sion and radio broad­cast­ing tow­er and opened on May the 22nd, 2012. It is cur­rent­ly the tallest tele­vi­sion tow­er and the third tallest struc­ture on earth after the Burj Khal­i­fa in Dubai and the PNB 118 in Kuala Lumpur.

By the way, the alti­tude of 634 meters was sup­pos­ed­ly delib­er­ate­ly cho­sen to be easy to remem­ber. The num­bers 6 (mu from mu[ttsu]), 3 (sa from san) and 4 (shi) add up to “Musashi”, an ancient name for the region where Tokyo is locat­ed. The tow­er offers two very pop­u­lar view­ing plat­forms at a height of 350m and 450m.

Luise had booked tick­ets for us for 4:00 p.m. We want­ed to watch the sun­set from the upper view­ing plat­form (from 450m height) dur­ing the won­der­ful weath­er. It was also very spec­tac­u­lar again, but unfor­tu­nate­ly Mount Fuji hid him­self behind clouds, but we will have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to see him lat­er (hope­ful­ly). The Skytree was not very far from our hotel, so we walked there by foot. Some pic­tures from the way:

Since we arrived at the Skytree a lit­tle too ear­ly, we first went to a café at the foot of the Skytree and for­ti­fied our­selves for the long pho­to ses­sion with waf­fles and ice cream.

At exact­ly 4:00 p.m. we were back in the tow­er and after a short delay we could take the ele­va­tor up to the low­er 350m high “Tem­bo Deck”. There we went direct­ly to the end of the long queue to the sec­ond ele­va­tor, which after about 1/2 hour took us to the top view­ing plat­form “Tem­bo Galleria”.

From up there, there was a mag­nif­i­cent view of the gigan­tic met­ro­pol­i­tan region of Tokyo, which stretched to the hori­zon. The long shad­ow cast by the SkyTree was also very impressive.

Here are some more pic­tures from 450m height. On the top left you can see our MIMARU Apartho­tel behind the build­ing of the ASAHI brewery.

We stayed in the upper Tem­bo Gal­le­ria until short­ly after sun­set and enjoyed the view across the impres­sive met­ro­pol­i­tan region stretch­ing to the hori­zon, where the lights came on lit­tle by lit­tle. Here are some more pic­tures from above:

After leav­ing the Skytree, we walked back home to our hotel. This time, on Luise’s rec­om­men­da­tion, we went to a near­by Iza­kaya for din­ner. Iza­kayas are a kind of pub where the Japan­ese often meet after din­ner for a “social gath­er­ing”. In fact, it is com­mon in Japan­ese restau­rants for peo­ple to leave right after their meal. How­ev­er, the Iza­kayas also offer small­er por­tions of food - sim­i­lar to Span­ish tapas. We tried a few vari­a­tions of these with Luise’s expert advice, and they were all very tasty.