Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en

Last time I authored a somewhat rant-tastic entry about Ota sensei’s Japanese Culture class and the accompanying field trips that it entails. Well, over the weekend we were treated to another of these mystery journeys. Thankfully, this one was better (though only slightly) than the supermarket funstravaganza of days past.

On Sunday (Sunday, mind you! A weekend! Augh!) the entire Japanese Culture class met and were herded onto a train at Fuchinobe station. We traveled for quite some time, changing trains at Hachioji, switching to a private line whose name I can’t remember, and generally becoming progressively more disoriented with every step. After a while we disembarked at a station where, upon entering the station, the loudspeakers on the train cheerily started playing the classic Japanese folk song “Sakura”, much to the delight of everyone who actually knew the song (read: not the white people). This was surely to be an exciting place. I would equate this to pulling into Downtown Crossing and hearing “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” over the loudspeakers. Surely not a bad sign, but who knows what it could mean?

We boarded a few buses and traveled even more disorientingly down side streets and boulevards in this mystery town, until we arrived at Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en. Edo, as all crossword puzzle-players know, was the former name of Tokyo; the Japanese “New Amsterdam”, if you will. Tatemono is a word meaning building, and the suffix “-en” describes a park. So, in sum, this name implies, roughly, a building park spanning the decades from Edo to Tokyo. In reality it is a large, vast park (especially by crowded Japanese standards) in a Tokyo suburb where many historical buildings have either been replicated or entirely relocated. It reminded me quite a bit of Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass or Colonial Williamsburg, but with green tea and sushi.

Edo-Tokyo Tatemonoen (ETT from here on), was actually a pretty cool place. Despite Ota and his enigma of a wife being present, I had a pretty decent time roaming around the place and exploring the seemingly endless supply of old buildings and houses from centuries past. My favorite area was a recreation of an old Tokyo town square in the center of the park. They had brought in an old streetcar from the 1910s or so, mounted it on some tracks, and all around rebuilt or replicated old apothecaries, sake stores, restaurants, tea shops, and even a bathhouse. It had an otherworldly quality to it, and you could really deceive yourself into thinking you had stepped back to that time. Furthermore, in the central square they had old-timey kid’s toys, including wooden stilts, swings, and even those old barrel hoop things that kids in movies like Newsies would run down the street hitting with sticks to make them roll. Of course, this became the center of attention for the foreigners, and the entire educational value of the place was dispensed in favor to see who could walk farthest on the stilts or roll their hoops the best.

All in all a far superior trip than the one to the supermarket, though the lack of embarrassed crabs does bring a tinge of sadness to my heart. Can’t win em all, I suppose.