Ueno kouen

Japanese live in synchronization with nature. The Shinto religion, central to Japanese life, is animist. The holidays are following the cycle of nature, with Beginning of Spring day, Spring and Autumn equinox days, nature day, ocean day, green (plant) day, Tanabata star festival, etc. The tradition on new year's eve is to watch the first sunrise of the year. This sunrise is also on TV on January 1st, seen from all the regions of japan. In this time of globalisation, Japanese groceries are seasonal. In most cities, one can find small rice fields here and there, as well as numerous shrines and temples usually surrounded by gardens and parks.

Tokyo also has numerous beautiful parks, especially Ueno Kouen (Park), between Akihabara and Tokyo Station. In the 13 hectares of the park are situated, amongst other things, the Tokyo Culture Hall, the Concert Hall of the Old Tokyo School of Music, the National Museum, the National Science Museum, the National Museum of Western Art, the Shita-machi Museum, the Metropolitan Fine Art Gallery, the Kiyomizu Kannon-do temple and a zoo. There is also some greenery (!) and a famous pond, Shinobazu-no-ike.

In recent years this beautiful park has been invaded by homeless people, who built their shelters from blue tarpaulins, as is customary in Japan. Because of them the authorities have installed low fences around every monument and patch of trees to keep the homeless from coming close, and strangely enough it seems to work. Still numerous blue houses can be seen in the park.

In the dense middle part of Ueno, turning right when exiting the lantern avenue, there is a huge stone lantern and the face of a big Buddha statue.

Only the face of the Buddha is left, the rest has been destroyed in the great earthquake of 1923.

Relaxing with nazi chocolate

I like black chocolate, the darker the better. So this Spring I tried the new chocolate Gaba, so named because it contains gamma-aminobutyric acid. According to the blurb, it is chocolate and it fights stress.

So far so good.

Then some market genius at Glico decided to ship a stress ball with each box; excellent idea, a stress ball with anti-stress chocolate. But what shape should the rubber ball be?

Why not Hitler?


Granted, it does not have the hair, but what else does it look like?

There are two more disturbing figures, nobody wants to tell me who they could be. The label just says "funny head that you can squish to help you relax". Any idea?


This one could be a war criminal. Let's have more chocolate to fight this stressful image.

Gaba is actually pretty good chocolate, and I can stop anytime I want!