After Ameyoko, I walked over to Ueno Park, where I had been already a couple of days earlier with Brandon, Paul, Mike and Marco.

This time I wanted to visit the National Museum of Western Art.

Ok, it might be a bit weird to run into the one museum in Tokyo that has the exact same stuff as any western city I’ve been to, but I just like to visit Pablo, Edouard, Paul, Claude and the others.

It was well worth it. While I quickly walked through the more-of-the-same religious early European art, I was rewarded with a full room with 13 paintings by Monet, and many other works by Manet, Gauguin, Rodin and others…

The building was designed by Le Corbusier. A classic, however not really a beauty, in my eye. The collection’s history is more interesting.

Matsukata Kōjirō was an early 20th-century businessman who made his money with the Kawasaki Shipbuilding Company.

He  devoted his life and fortune to amassing a collection of Western art. However, much of his collection was in Europe at the outbreak of WWII, and parts of it burned in London.

What was in Paris was handed over to France as part of the San Francisco peace treaty. Later on though, France gave it back as a sign of renewed friendship with Japan.

After that visit, I walked though Ueno park, enjoying the sun, a little market that was up in the middle of the plaza, and visited a few of the temples.

I am already pretty good at the ritual hand washing, before walking up to a temple. I enjoy looking at all the wishes people post to those temples, some of them I can actually understand.