MUSEUMS

What makes Ueno Park one of Tokyo’s most successful tourist attractions is the presence of many of the city’s most important museums: the National Museum, the Museum of Western Art, the Nature and Science Museum, the Shitamachi Museum, the University Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Tokyo. 

The Ueno Zoo, the largest and most important in Tokyo, which I’ll be telling you about later, is also found in the park.

 

The park is home to numerous art and music schools, the first Western-style concert hall in Japan and the opera and ballet theater, as well as the National Library and the International Library of Children’s Literature.

You can also see a small Shintoist shrine, the Tōshō-gū, and a Buddhist temple; you’ll find numerous statues of Japanese historical figures, and even a stone altar dedicated to Ulysses Grant, the first US president to visit Japan, in 1879, although he had already left the White House at the time.