aliceinwonderdanmark

Ueno Park is a park (as you could guess) but not only: Ueno park hosts several museums (National Museum, Wester Art Museum, Natural Sciences Museum, Art Gallery) and one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) concert Hall of Tokyo, the Bunkan Kai Kan.

The plan is to visit at least the National Museum. My friend and I like museum so it supposed to take a while to see the entire exhibition.
May be I'm crazy but I like Japanese trains and metro. Well, not really spending hours in a train but I like the organisation: efficient, safe and quiet. No delay, no cancellation, no pickpockets.
It takes a while to reach the park. Something like 1:30. Fisrt we need to go to Yokohama station, then a train to Tokyo and to change again in Tokyo. 
At Ueno station there's several exits. We're looking for the West exit but, don't know why, we don't find any West exit on the signs. We decide to ask a policeman. It was not a very good idea because he does not speak English. I won't write here our conversation with him but it was in the great Ionesco style. That's why we decide to trust our intuition and few minutes later we're enjoying the great atmosphere of the park. We go directly to the National Museum.

The exhibition spreads out in 4 buildings. Each building has its own topic: antiquity, painting...one afternoon is not enough, at least for me. I like both exhibition and buildings. If the quality of the exhibition is, of course, a necessity, I think the way it is shown is very important as well. The room and surroundings should fit the exhibition and the route of the visit must be pleasant otherwise it spoils the visit.

We won't have time for others museum. At 4pm I have to queue to get 3 tickets for Don Quichotte by La Scala. That's pretty funny to think that I grew up about 400km away from Milano and that I'll see the Ballet company for the very fisrt time in live in Tokyo.
Tonight it's Jose Manuel Carreno as Basile and Tamara Rojo as Kitri. That's intersting: both of them are guests. Tamara is Principal at the Royal Ballet of London and I don't know where dances Jose but I think is an International guest in many companies. For those who are interested in ballet and read French I've made a review (see under Rubriques Critiques/Review).
Briefly I can say that my friends and I really enjoyed the evening. Everything was well  organized. You can see from any seat. The cheapest category is just far from the stage but one can rent opera-glasses for few coins.