Ueno Park, Tokyo

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Ueno Park is built on the remains of the Kan'eiji Temple. Althogh many great structures were burned down when Meiji Government formed a new regine as the Empreor the supreme god-like being. Now it is a nice park and the remains of the temple can barely seen in Kiyomizu Kannondo Temple and Ueno Toshogu Shrine and five-storied pagoda in the zoo. There are a number of statues and monuments such as Takamori Saigo, Hideyo Noguchi and surprising presence of General Grant who planted trees there and even colossal blue whale sculpture in front of the science museum. Also Ueno park is surrounded by a number of popular museums including National Museum and National Science Museum. Museum hopping is one of the most popular Tokyoites pastimes

This is a nice park to visit, via train from Tokyo. If you come on any day but a Monday, you will find all the Art Galleries & Museums are open, the Zoo is here, there are Temples, nice gardens, Playgrounds and a large Lake.

A minus is......... quite a few homeless Japanese sleep on the park benches or under make-shift homes of cardboard, don't worry, they don't take any notice of you.

Its a nice spot to enjoy on a hot Tokyo day, and if you are here in Spring, its an excellent place to see the Cherry Blossoms. When we were there, (July) the large Shinobazu Lotus Pond was just coming into bloom, what a sight that would have been a couple of weeks later.

OK so you know when you visit Tokyo it is going to be busy, busy, busy and it is. Combine that with all the neon lights and sometimes you just have a sensory overload and need a break from it...Ueno park is the perfect solution!

this park is large and when i went there seemed to be a lot going on - street performers etc o that was amusing in itself.

Great number of families and couples (obviously sick of shopping!) in the area...infact I felt really lonely here as a lone tourist as nobody else seemed to be on their own :-(

Lovely park in central Tokyo.

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I went to Ueno Park in the evening, it is a pleasant walk. We didn't go to any of the museums there, but we went to the natsu matsuri (summer festival) fair held in the area. Had takopaki, yakisoba and even watched some people try their hand at the goldfish scooping game. It was really nice, something different.

Note the fair is only held at a certain time in summer. Many different districts have it.
There were fireworks around the same time further down the area at Asakusa, but we didn't go; it's a crush I heard, with millions of people. And you don't always get a good view, with Tokyo high-rise. So I thought, forget it.

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Ueno Park offers not only some green area for locals, but also museums, shrines, temples and even a zoo. It wasopened to public in 1873. The park has more than 1000 cherry trees and becomes a popular spot during cherry blossom viewing parties (hanami). There are many art museums inside the park. Zoo dates back to 1882, but unfortunately the main attraction panda (a gift from China) has died. Yet you can still buy panda souvenirs. Shinobazu Pond hosts a temple for goddess Benten and Toshogu Shrine is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu.

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This shrine, located inside Ueno Park, is dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Edo shogunate, which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867.
Toshogu ("Light of the East" or "Sun god of the east") Shrine is any Shinto shrine in which Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined with the name Tōshō Daigongen.

Nearby there's also monument for The flame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is said that the dove containing a little flame inside it has its source from a fire after the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Another famous Toshogu is in Nikko, which is the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu and dedicated to the spirits of two other of Japan's most influential historical personalities, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Minamoto Yoritomo.

Admission fee is 200 Yen

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Ueno park is a huge public park just next to Ueno station.
There's so many things to see here, you can easily spend the whole day, of course that's if you don't visit all of the Museums inside the park.

Anyway due to the time constraint and lack of research on my part, I skipped or missed quite a number of interesting sights there.

Here are some of the highlights:
-Saigo Takamori's statue (I missed this one)
-Ueno Zoo (no time to visit)
-Shinobazu Pond (should be nice on spring, but it was winter when I was here...)
-Many Shrines and Temples: Hanazono Inari Shrine, Benten Hall, Toshogu Shrine, etc.
-Many Museums: Tokyo National Museum, the Orient Museum, the National Science Museum, the National Museum for Western Art, the Tokyo Metropolitan Fine Art Gallery, etc.
-more than 1000 cherry trees! (they're all bald on winter...)
-And not to mention the many entertainers trying to amuse the visitors.

I read somewhere that if we were looking for good cherry blossom viewing that we should head over to Ueno Park. Best part about this park was that it was free to enter. Worst part, was that there were SO many people. It was literally a sea of people. All along the sides of the walkway people had set up camp for their picnic and then it was toe to toe all through the park. I'm not a big fan of crowds like that, so we set off to find an area where there were fewer people. We made our way down to the zoo, but we didn't go in. Instead we bought some corn on the cob on a stick and ate lunch ghetto style on the ground with no blanket. It was delicious. I agree that the cherry blossoms here are not to be missed, but the crowds make me question whether or not i'd go back there again.