Excursion to Edo Museum and Asakusa District with Prof. Roderick Smith
by Uyanga Tumurbaatar
November 26th, Saturday, marks a very special day on my calendar, as my GSEP colleagues, myself and our professors went on a wonderful excursion to Tokyo’s biggest historical museum; The Edo Tokyo Museum and also explored the beautiful area around it. To top it off we got to spend the whole day with the extremely humble Professor Roderick Smith from Imperial College London and his very lovely wife.
At 11am, everyone had already gathered, after a brief talk and a short photo session we all entered the museum; we were all extremely excited and hurried ourselves towards the entrance.
Going up from the 3rd floor to 6th floor; where the main entrance was, we were surrounded by the pictures of people in Japanese kimono and European costumes on the walls of the escalator tunnel. It made me feel like I was travelling through a time machine back to history. When we arrived on the 6th floor, the very first thing we saw as the beautiful life-size model of the Nihonbashi bridge (the wooden version as first built in 1603) which literally led us the way to Japan’s Edo period.
The museum’s exhibition is divided into two main categories; The Edo zone and the Tokyo zone. Besides the historical pictures, historical maps and scrolls, there were many “try this” parts where you could lift chests of gold, buckets of water and fish and move a traditional matoi which was used to alert firefighters in case of fire, which gave us all an idea how a lot of things worked in the Edo period. Together with the exceptionally detailed mini-models of traditional styled houses, Kabuki theatres, palaces, and the times’ ancient markets, it gave me a vivid image of how the people’s lives were during that period. The Edo zone also includes various information about the period’s social structure, territories of water supply, how the toilets were used and even how the traditional midwives delivered babies at home.
I, completely involved in the Edo period, had lost the estimate of time and suddenly hurried to the central performance area where the Japanese balance performance would perform. When I got there, all of my classmates and lecturers were already so busy astounded by the performance of the Japanese performer who could balance an entire tea set on a stick on her nose!
The audience were all given a long and thin piece of paper to practice balancing it on their hands, but unfortunately after some time of trying (and failing terribly) it was 1pm already and it was our time to have lunch and then leave the museum. For me, two hours was definitely not enough to fully explore the history of Tokyo (I hadn’t even entered the Tokyo zone yet), but looking at how beautiful the whole museum was I definitely plan to come back one day.
Our next destination was Asakusa. we went there by water bus over the Sumida river. Going on a water bus is an excellent way to view a different part of the city and also a much more relaxing means of transportation in the midst of metropolitan Tokyo. It offered a beautiful view of the buildings surrounding the river, the famous Tokyo Skytree and even some restaurants on boats. Asakusa is one of the most famous spot for tourists, with this meaning we saw many small interesting shops along the streets. Along the way Prof. Smith and his wife explained a lot of interesting facts about the area and we even stopped at a road-side secondhand market. When we reached the Asakusa temple, Prof. Smith left us with a very warm farewell and we departed our ways.
If you are in Japan, you must know that Autumn here is truly beautiful. But in Asakusa itself, the view of the majestic temples and all the colorful trees combined is like a scene from a fairytale. Asakusa also offers one of the biggest lanes of souvenir stalls in Tokyo that sell all sorts of wonderful items, we wandered around the area for a while and did a lot of photoshoots, we didn’t forget to shoot some funny videos too.
Finally, after a day of exploring, we all felt hungry and decided to eat at a seafood restaurant nearby, managing to make room for some ice cream to end the day. And so our tiring yet super exciting and fun day had finished. I had an absolute blast and I bet all my classmates did as well. This trip also marks the end of our third quarter here at Tokyo Tech and now we’re ready for the last quarter of our first year in GSEP!
Myself and all the other GSEP students would like to give an extremely big thanks to all our lecturers who have given their time to arrange this trip and of course to Prof. Smith and his lovely wife for the very memorable day, we hope to meet again someday!
Edited by Farid Triawan
Photos by Alvin C.G. Varquez