Day 17 - Friday November 10, 2017 - Bonsai and Kitchenware
Bonsai and Kitchenware
Posted on Friday November 10, 2017
Today we’re planning on taking the train from Shinjuku to Toro (about 35 minutes on the train) to visit the Bonsai Museum and Gardens.
We’ll probably get a train back to Ueno and then visit Kappabashi-dori Kitchen Town.
We headed for the station about 8.30, finding an entrance slightly closer to the station than the one we exited from yesterday. Up the escalator (better than having to take the stairs), turn right .. and it looks like we’ll be right by track 4 which is where we need to be. Pity they’re all automated gates and the ‘staff gate’ is closed with no-one on it. Oh well, no worry – A-M walks through the (open) automated gate, holding up the JR rail passes for any security camera to see and – snap! – the gate arms close and an alarm sounds. There’s someone in uniform about 10 metres away on the other side, in conversation. Eventually that finishes and we manage to get his attention and he comes over and opens the staff gate to let us through.
Down the stairs to platform 4. We’re just in time getting down the stairs, as a train arrives and a veritable tide of humanity on its way to work emerges and engulfs the stairs. We’re a bit early for our direct train to Toro (one stop beyond Omiya) – we could have hopped on one of the earlier trains that came through and changed at Omiya but figured we might as well wait.
The Omiya Bonsai Museum is actually in Saitama though the nearest station is Toro. We exit the station and find lots of signs pointing the way. The (private) gardens were originally started in the 1930s by bonsai growers looking for a better climate, air, water etc. There used to be 30 or more gardens but only 5 now remain.
On its founding, the ‘bonsai village’ had four residence requirements:
1. Possession of 10 or more bonsai
2. Agreeing to open their gardens to the public
3. No two-story houses
4. The use of hedges as live fencing
Saitama has obviously grown up around these original gardens (think ‘plant nursery’) and the Museum itself was opened in 2010.
In the Museum, there was one bonsai in the lobby, which you were allowed to photograph. Then into the Gallery, with good explanations of the process and a display of half a dozen or so of what are considered to be the absolute best examples – but absolutely no photographs allowed. Then in to the Exhibition – largely Japanese wood block prints and manga that in some part included bonsai – interesting but all the explanations were in Japanese, so regrettably incomprehensible.
From there, outside into an area with two dozen or so bonsai which you were allowed to photograph. Then on to a larger garden area with probably 50+ bonsai – no photographs allowed! Completely unclear as to why you could photograph some and not others. While out there, we spotted a group of people up on what appeared to be a balcony – so when we exited back into the lobby, we nipped upstairs to find the balcony and took a photo looking down into the forbidden garden.
The bonsai are truly amazing – many of them two feet tall, perfect trees in miniature. There were some that were different, old and gnarled but all a product of a lifetime of cultivation and effort. There were several parties of (young) schoolchildren being taken on tours and given various lectures and explanations – good to see, I guess, that they start them at a young age.
We headed out in search of the other ‘gardens’. In a way, they are more like plant nurseries though the bonsai are not overtly for sale. At the first one we visited, we must have been the first arrival of the day as they quickly grabbed and put out the ‘no photographs’ sign. At the last one (which was probably the best) there was a sign with a camera (but no line through it) with something underneath in Japanese, so we chose to interpret that as meaning photos were ok.
By now, we were at the ‘bottom’ end of the village, where there is another train station and a few shops and restaurants. We couldn’t find the restaurant we were looking for (it looked more like a butchers) so we went in the cafe next door. We would probably have settled for just a coffee but as they had various lunch offerings, decided we might as well eat. We both had the udon noodles – from the photograph, it wasn’t entirely clear what you were going to find in your bowl but in the event, it was very nice, a sort of Thai style with coconut milk broth.
We caught the train one stop to Omiya, where we changed to the JR line train to Ueno (where we got off the shinkansen from Kanazawa yesterday). Two stops on the Ginza subway line to Tarawamachi, to go to Kappabashi-dori, a street lined with kichenware shops – when you see the big chef, you know you’re there. We had gone just to have a nose around – all manner of things from industrial-size rice cookers to pots and pans (including square Japanese omelette pans), crockery, bowls, all manner of kitchen implements, those plastic replicas you see in the windows of Japanese restaurants.
A-M had previously been looking for ‘gelatin art tools’ that are used to make decorative (and edible) jellies. Amazon sells them in the U.S. (imported from China) but doesn’t ship them overseas. One shop selling kitchen moulds and similar items looked a likely candidate so she went in for a look, while I loitered outside. I figured a picture might help so found a couple of links she had previously sent me. A-M comes out again with the same idea … so back in she goes, now armed with a couple of pictures, before triumphantly re-emerging a couple of minutes later, purchase in hand. The triumph was somewhat deflated however by the realisation that the tools are made of metal (albeit fairly thin) and thus probably not going to be allowed in our carry-on bags. No matter, we can always mail them home…
We head back to the subway station, cleverly (or so we thought) finding the small entrance by which we had previously exited – an elevator up from the platform, connecting more or less directly to the street. Little did we realise – until we got back down there, through the barriers and on to the platform – that you couldn’t get to the platform going the other way (primarily I suspect because there was some construction going on). We headed down the other end of the platform and tried to explain to the man on the gate our dilemma and get him to fix our Pasmo cards. No choice but to climb the stairs back up to the street to find the correct entrance to the line going the other way.
The saving grace in this was, when we got to the top of the stairs and emerged back on the street, there was a uniformed staff member with a sign showing how to find the correct entrance (which was across the street). However, the map sign he was holding up also said ‘Post Office’ so, having confirmed with him that the Asakusa Post Office was just round the corner, we headed round there to try and mail A-M’s purchase. It took a bit of doing – first to fnd a suitable envelope and then to try and explain to the man behind the counter (who spoke no English) what we wanted to do. When A-M showed him what she was trying to mail, there was a look of bewilderment on his face at these strange looking metal implements. Fortunately, A-M’s purchase had also provided a written booklet guide, all in Japanese (except for one headline on one page that bizarrely says “Let’s Have A Party”). Once he grasped what they were, no problem … except of course for finding the correct form to fill in. That done, the package was finally mailed …. the postage, of course, costing more than the contents. Hopefully it will arrive….
We headed across the street to the correct entrance and took the subway back to the apartment, stopping for supplies (primarily for breakfast) on the way. As inertia set in, I was later despatched back to the store for dinner supplies…
As I write this, the obvious solution to our earlier subway dilemma has just dawned on me. Finding ourselves on the platform going the wrong way with no way to get across to the correct platform, we should have just got on the train going the wrong way — as it’s only one stop to the end of the line at Asakusa, from where it would have been easy to switch direction. Duh! However, we did solve our ‘find a post office’ dilemma so perhaps the gods were smiling on us after all.