Japanese Times

November 9th, 1998 Ueno is one of my favourite areas of Tokyo. It´s lively and on a smaller scale than most other areas of Tokyo with their skyscrapers, 12-floor department stores and wall-to-wall shopping arcades.
South of the Ueno train station is a great market area, just next to the JR Yamanote train line. This market has everything you can name, and most of the stuff is sold in small stalls open to the streets. Shoppers fill the narrow streets and the shopkeepers shout and praise their offerings while the Yamanote trains rumble overhead. Especially in the evenings those narrow alleys have a lot of what Tokyo must have been like in the old days.

	On my last stroll through the market area before I leave Tokyo, I suddenly stand in front of stairs that lead up to a small temple in the middle of this market area. I must have gone by this temple dozens of times over the last few years, and I never even suspected it there. What a beautiful surprise.
Even with all the turmoil around it, the noise of the market stalls, the music from the open shop fronts, the Yamanote trains speeding past only some 10 meters away, the temple still manages to retain a certain atmosphere of tranquility.