Dad’s Day Off #2, Part 1: A Day in Fukagawa

Having a good day off calls for good planning, but not too much of it - you also need to leave room for serendipity. March 21st was the first day of Spring, which is a holiday here in Japan, and it was the first really warm, sunny day of the year. Maria had the day off from work, and she was kind enough to take the boys so I could run around on my own for the day. I made a plan to spend the day in Fukagawa - it’s a working class section of Tokyo that you won’t find in Lonely Planet or other tourist guide books (one sure indicator of it being off the beaten tourist path was that I didn’t see any non-Japanese faces all day). However, I did find a superb walking tour at the Tokyo Visitor’s Guide site. The page says to plan on a half day for it, but I decided to give it a full day, so I could take my time and branch off from the planned route if I wanted to.

That approach worked out perfectly, as there were two things I didn’t anticipate: one was that Fukagawa has a number of Buddhist temples with graveyards attached to them (I really like exploring graveyards), and the other was that the first day of Spring is when everyone comes out to clean their family haka, put fresh flowers on them, and burn incense. Japanese are typically cremated when they die. Their names are then inscribed on the family haka, which is a stone monument, and the ashes are placed inside along with the rest of the deceased family members.

I started at the Fukagawa Edo Museum, which provides an authentic re-creation of a roughly 1 block area of Fukagawa as it was during the Edo period (which is after Japan opened to the West for trade but before industrialization). It’s really wonderfully done - you can go inside all the buildings and get a close look at all the fine details of the interiors. There are also some humorous touches, such as a small statue of a peeing dog, and if you look closely, you can find a statue of a cat hiding inside a basket.

From there I headed to Kiyosumi Teien Gardens, but I was intrigued by a temple I saw along the way so I stopped in for a look. The place was bustling with activity and filled with smoke from incense, as folks were out to clean their family haka, bring flowers, and offer prayers. I’m usually fairly conservative with my picture taking, but over the course of the day I ended up filling my digital camera, mostly with pictures of interesting haka at this temple and others (like I said, I have a thing for graveyards).

After getting my fill of the graveyard, I grabbed a conbini (convenience store) lunch, so I could enjoy a picnic for one in the Kiyosumi Teien Gardens. Unlike the US, you can actually get halfway decent food from the convenience stores here. The Garden was quite simply one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. In addition to the amazing landscaping, it was filled with interesting ducks, birds, turtles, and fish. What struck me most though was the boulders. Normally I wouldn’t comment on rocks, but these were specially selected and hauled in from all over Japan when the garden was built, and their shapes and patterns were really fascinating.

While I was in the park a couple old ladies struck up a conversation with me. They didn’t speak any English, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could understand and communicate (of course, they were doing their best to speak simply to me). Usually when I’m out Maria is with me, and there’s a natural tendency for her to do the talking and for folks to address her instead of me, since she speaks Japanese, and you can’t tell from looking at her that she’s not from here. So I don’t have these kinds of encounters very often. I was able to tell them I was from America, and they asked if I was sleepy (I guess they thought I just stepped off a plane). I told them that I arrived in January and that I was here with my wife, who was working here until June (but I broke that information down into 3 simple Japanese sentences, as that’s where I’m at with my grammar). After that things broke down, as I couldn’t understand their next set of questions. So we said goodbye to each other, but I was happy to have made it that far.

So that’s the story up through lunchtime. I’ll write about the second half of the day - when I witnessed a car being blessed by a monk - in my next post.

[tags]Tokyo, Fukagawa, Fukagawa Edo Museum, Kiyosumi Teien Gardens, haka, Japanese graveyards[/tags]