Ueno Park

What the guides say about Ueno Park

Lunch and afternoon. Sometaro, an okonomiyaki house in a prewar wooden building near the temple, hands you the batter and the hotplate and lets you get on with it. Then take the Ginza line three stops to Ueno. Ueno Park is the museum district, and even on a five-day trip the rule is still to pick one. Which one? The Tokyo National Museum for swords and armour, or the National Museum of Western Art for a Le Corbusier building full of Monets, if day five is going to give you enough Japanese art anyway (both close on Mondays). Walk it off through Ameya Yokocho, the market under the tracks that started as a postwar black market and never quite stopped being one in spirit.

Afternoon in Ueno Park. Three stops on the Ginza line, or a pleasant 25-minute walk. Ueno Park holds the densest cluster of museums in Japan, and on a short trip the move is to pick exactly one. The Tokyo National Museum is the right default, with samurai armour, swords and Buddhist sculpture in the Honkan building, all of it the real thing. It closes on Mondays (the park and Ameyoko don't). Give it 90 minutes, not four hours, then spend what's left of the afternoon under the park's trees or browsing the Ameyoko market stalls that run under the train tracks south of the park.

The famous three, with the crowds to match. Ueno Park lines its main avenue with hundreds of trees and is the busiest hanami ground in the city. It's magic at 8am and a queue by early afternoon. Chidorigafuchi turns the palace moat into a tunnel of branches over rowing boats, and on a sunny weekend the boat queue runs to hours. The Meguro River in Nakameguro becomes one of the most photographed canals in Japan, lanterns and blossoms reflected in the water after dark. The canal-side bars and riverside restaurants are why you'd stay past sunset, and why the towpath is shoulder to shoulder.