Ueno: the park and the market below
Tokyo's museum hill, a lotus pond, and the railway-arch market beneath it. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Tokyo National Museum
Start at the top of the park, at the country's oldest and largest museum. You don't have to go in to feel the scale, but the Honkan's Japanese galleries are the one collection in Tokyo worth an unhurried hour.

2. National Museum of Western Art
Le Corbusier's only building in Japan, a UNESCO-listed box of raw concrete, with Rodins loose in the forecourt. Stand among the bronzes a moment even if you walk straight past the ticket desk.

3. Ueno Toshogu
A gold-leafed *jinja* (Shinto shrine) from 1651, somehow survived every fire and quake and bomb the park threw at it. The lantern-lined approach is the quiet counterweight to the museums.

4. Kiyomizu Kannon-do
A small temple on a rise, modelled on Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera, with a round 'moon pine' framing the pond below. Look through the loop of the branch; the view was designed to be seen exactly there.

5. Shinobazu Pond
Drop down to the lotus pond — a green raft of leaves over your head in high summer, open water and gulls in winter. Walk the causeway to the *Bentendo* on its island, then on towards the market.

6. Ameyoko
The market under and beside the JR railway, half fishmongers and dried-fruit sellers, half trainers and spices. Loud, cheap, and the antidote to a morning of museums. It spills out at Okachimachi.

Ueno: the park and the market below