Tokyo Done Properly

 

After some adventures in Indonesia, I headed back to the Philippines to finally reunite with Nikki after a couple of months away. There was barely a moment's rest, however, before we were jetting off once again–this time for a week-long trip to Japan. Nikki had been wanting to go to Japan for years, as had I, my brief layover earlier this year not being nearly sufficient. It was a bucket list item for Nikki's mom too, so we decided to make it a family trip, with Nikki's sister Jill flying in to join as well.

This was very much not intended to be a birding trip- rather it was a chance for Nikki's family to see some of Japan. We were spending most of the time in Tokyo, and Nikki put a vast amount of work into an itinerary that took us to a variety of shrines, museums, parks, and shopping areas. Still, there was quite a bit of down time as well, and I had ample opportunity to go off on my own and see some more of Tokyo's birding areas, which is exactly what I did. 

We arrived in Tokyo late on the evening of September 29- or rather into the Narita airport, which is about 2 hours outside of Tokyo proper. It was late so we took a hired car to our hotel–one of the many little toaster-shaped cars that seem incredibly popular in Japan. By the time we got in there was little to do but drop our bags, find a bite to eat at one of the many local 7-Elevens, and fall asleep. 

Our hotel was in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, known for the enormous Sensō-ji Buddhist temple and its many restaurants, shops, and entertainment. We could see the temple from our hotel window, in fact, and every time we stepped onto the street we were immediately thrust into the zoo of humanity that can only be found in downtown Tokyo: locals wearing kimonos and obis and doing photoshoots, teenagers in anime cosplay, and hundreds of gawping tourists trying to find their way through the maze of narrow streets, food vendors, and flashing signs. One thing I do love about Tokyo is that it feels distinctly itself, like no other place in the world. That's more than I can say for most other cities I've been, with only a few exceptions like Bangkok, Addis Ababa and Yogyakarta. I'm not really much of a weeb or a Japanophile but after spending a while in Tokyo, well, I Get It. 

Scenes from Asakusa- sort of makes me wish I was still into street photography...

The Nakamise-dori Street market

Part of the Sensō-ji temple

The first morning we mostly spent catching up on sleep and exploring Asakusa. In the afternoon we braved the Tokyo metro for the first time to visit Ueno Park in the Taitō ward. The park itself was beautiful- clean, full of people enjoying their Sunday afternoons, and home to a nice zoo and several museums. Our main destination was the Tokyo National Museum, the oldest in Japan and home to a truly fantastic collection of art and other artifacts from Japan's history that was good enough that even an uncultured heathen like me was enthralled. Japan has a long and fascinating history, going a collection of feudal backwater islands to one of the world's colonial superpowers and now a cultural hegemon better known for cute cartoons and good cameras than, well, the other stuff. Lots of that history is bloody and terrible, and my thoughts on Japanese imperialism and modern-day nationalism aren't printable on this blog, but it's also produced some of the finest art, architecture and fashion the world has ever seen. This isn't really a history blog so I won't go into it too much, but I'll just leave a few example images from the museum here.

One of the temples in Ueno Park

The museum gardens

Just a weird little sculpture guy

Japanese landscape painting is one of my absolute favorite art styles

Some very impressive samurai armor (I can only assume antlers and mustache are essential features)

We returned to Asakusa that evening, where we had dinner at one of those carousel sushi restaurants and Nikki had her first and last taste of nattō. I'd spent an entire day in a new country while doing nearly no birding at all, which has to be some kind of record for me. I can't really complain though; birding in Tokyo isn't exactly spectacular (as I was about to find out), and the real attractions are the cultural ones. It's an excuse to touch concrete, as my friend Doug says. 

Still, I had to get some birding in while I was there. The next morning I dedicated to tracking down the few possible lifers for me in Tokyo that time of year. October is a pretty underwhelming month in Japan bird-wise, as most of the summer breeders have departed and the interesting winter birds aren't there yet. It's migration time so there's always the chance of something interesting, but it seems that Tokyo isn't really in the path of bird migration. I decided to visit the Kaisai Rinkai Park, located on the shore of Tokyo Bay, to look for some water birds and a few resident birds that had eluded me on my last visit. The park is a popular destination for families, having a ferris wheel and lots of little food stalls, as well as being right next to Tokyo Disneyland. However, it also has a small bird sanctuary where eBird told me there might be a few lifers around.

I took the train from Asakusa early on the morning, arriving at Kaisai Rinkai station about an hour later. Tokyo is cris-crossed by one of the most extensive metro networks in the world, making it easy to get just about anywhere using public transport. It's one of the things that makes the city feel exceedingly livable. As soon as I exited the metro, I started looking for birds. It started with the usual Rock Pigeons flying overhead, and a flock of Warbling White-eyes wasn't nice enough to stop for pictures. Large-billed Crows, Carrion Crows, and Brown-eared Bulbuls were all over, but didn't feel like posing either. I did happen upon a much more friendly group of Japanese Tits, which were more than happy to come and investigate my pishing. 

Japanese Tit

Carrion Crow

Scenery in Kaisai Rinkai Park

I wandered around on the many trails until I found one that went past some little artificial ponds with wildlife blinds. There were many Black Kites flying around on the open areas, and out to sea were many Great Cormorants and a good selection of gulls, including Black-tailed Gulls, Herring Gulls, and Slaty-backed Gulls, the latter of which was a lifer for me. A Bull-headed Shrike perched up briefly for a picture, as did a female Blue Rock Thrush. In the ponds were lots of Eastern Spot-billed Ducks and a couple of Little Grebes, but the highlight was a little flock of Azure-winged Magpies. Later on I also happened on a little flock of Warbling White-eyes and some noisy Brown-eared Bulbuls, along with some interesting insect life for my non-bird lists.

Black Kite

Blue Rock Thrush

Azure-winged Magpie

Warbling White-eye- the ones here used to be called Japanese White-eye, and they have rufous flanks unlike the Warbling White-eyes in the Philippines. By White-eye standards that makes them wildly distinctive, but apparently the Zosterops experts disagree

Brown-eared Bulbul eating a Large Brown Cicada

Autumn Darter

Pea Blue

Japanese Broadwinged Katydid

The creatively named Red-clawed Crab

Geisha distinctissima is an interesting name for a leafhopper that doesn't really look like a geisha and isn't particularly distinct-looking

Pale Grass Blue

Campsomeriella annulata, a cool scoliid wasp

Back along the side of the bay I got a look at the weird buildings of Tokyo Disneyland, along with lots of Black-tailed Gulls and Great Cormorants flying past. In the woods I had a quick look at a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker, which was a lifer for me, and another Bull-headed Shrike. There was a beautiful Oriental Turtle Dove feeding on the path, and near a bridge to a small island I saw a few Eastern Spot-billed Ducks. There was a birder there taking pictures, and while he didn't say anything or acknowledge me when I approached I saw that he was looking at a small group of Red-necked Stints, a nice Japan lifer for me. 

Black-tailed Gull

Bull-headed Shrike

Oriental Turtle Dove

Eastern Spot-billed Duck

Red-necked Stint

Angled Sunbeam

Common Straight Swift

Wasp Spider eating an invasive Seven-spotted Lady Beetle

I crossed the bridge to the little island to see if there might be more interesting water birds or gulls, but all of the gulls had gone further out to sea. There was a single confiding Great Crested Grebe that allowed me to get decent pictures, along with a few White Wagtails (sadly not the similar Japanese Wagtail, which I still haven't seen). Great Egrets and Little Egrets were flying around the shore, and as I walked back across the bridge I had a Eurasian Kestrel, a nice new Japan bird.

Great Crested Grebe with a photobombing mullet

Immature White Wagtail

Adult White Wagtail

Great Egret

Great and Little Egrets, in case you were wondering about the size comparison

Eurasian Kestrel

Walking back toward the metro, I detoured down a path through a wooded valley and found a nice flock of many White-cheeked Starlings, along with a few more Japanese Tits. I headed back to the hotel after that and had a chill afternoon. In the evening Nikki and I ate dinner at a yakiniku (Japanese barbecue) place, which ended up being one of our favorite meals of the trip.

Japanese Tit

White-cheeked Starling- not the most impressive of the starlings if we're going to be honest

I'm pretty good at being vegetarian when I'm home on my own, and very bad at it when I'm traveling

The next day was another non-birding day, as we visited the Shinjuku district to get a taste of Tokyo's bustling downtown and shopping scene. We tried to visit the Tokyo City Hall and its overlook over the city, but annoyingly enough the only elevator up was under repairs so we had to stay down below. We did get a chance to visit the famous Shibuya Crossing, certainly up there with Central Park in terms of urban spectacles. I also was able to have lunch and catch up with my good friend Mika who was based in Tokyo but only had the afternoon to meet before leaving on a work trip.

Tokyo street scene

Tokyo City Hall from below

Shibuya Crossing

Shibuya Crossing from above

On Wednesday and Thursday of that week we actually left Tokyo to visit Nikkō National Park, which was my personal highlight of the whole trip. I saw enough birds and got enough good pictures there that I think I'll leave that for the next blog post. 

After we got back, Nikki and I visited Meiji Shrine (Meiji Jingū), one of the biggest in Tokyo. The shrine is dedicated to the Emperor Meiji, Japan's first emperor who helped transform it into an isolationist state to an industrialized world power within his lifetime. A mixed legacy to be sure, but certainly an impressive one. The actual shrine was huge and beautiful, although there was a ceremony happening so we didn't want to spend too much time there. Even better, it's in the middle of a huge forested park and botanic gardens, meaning we got to do a little birding as well. I got a quick look at a migratory Narcissus Flycatcher and Japanese Sparrowhawk, and we saw a flock of Varied Tits and a very confiding Little Grebe in a pond dedicated to the empress. That night we ate at the famous Asakusa Gyūkatsu restaurant, serving deep fried beef cutlets. We had to stand in line for almost an hour to get in, but it was more than worth the wait and deserving of the hype, unlike some of the other spots we visited.

Nikki by the gate of the Meiji Jingū

Little Grebe

Varied Tit

Joro Spider, endemic to East Asia but introduced to a few parts of the American South

Lethe sicelis, a Japan-endemic butterfly

Some extremely tasty gyūkatsu

October 6 was our last day in Tokyo, so I decided to spend the morning birding to try and get just a couple more Japan lifers. I'd realized by then that Tokyo really isn't spectacular birding-wise, especially not in the fall- over the course of a week and with some fairly intensive birding I ended up with only 66 species- a total I could get in a single morning of birding in the Philippines. Still, I wanted to try and see a few more while I had the chance. 

I spent that morning at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park, a well-known birding spot along Tokyo Bay close to Haneda Airport. I didn't get there until 8 in the morning, but that was fine since the park didn't open until 8 anyway–a bit of a strange choice for a birding-centered location. There were lots of other birders and photographers there as well, but it didn't exactly feel all that social. In fact, it seems like the norm for birders in Japan is to never talk to each other or even really acknowledge others' presence. Even when everyone was staring up into the canopy of the forest trying to get on some bird or another, nobody ever pointed anything out or said what they were looking at. That might have just been because I was a foreigner and they didn't feel like speaking English (which is fair), but nobody was talking to each other in Japanese either. Perhaps the expectation is that birding is done solo and people prefer solitude and quiet even in a group, but it made birding feel very isolating and not like the group bonding experience I've had when encountering birders pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Unfriendly vibes and weird start time aside, the birding at the Wild Bird Park was halfway decent.There was a little wetland inlet with some nice hides set up, some well-maintained trails, and a wildlife center with a spotting scope and useful info about birds. The inllet a good number of ducks hanging around- mostly Green-winged Teals but also a few Garganeys and Mallards, and in a deeper area Northern Pintails and Eastern Spot-billed Ducks along with the usual ubiquitous Great Cormorants. I hoped that the wagtails chasing each other around were Japanese Wagtails and that the pair of plovers was Long-billed Plovers (both would have been lifers for me), but alas they were just garden variety White Wagtails and Little Ringed Plovers. A raptor passed overhead that I hoped might be one of the interesting accipiters, but unfortunately it was just a Grey-faced Buzzard. There were some nice mixed flocks in a little forest area including Warbling White-eyes, Brown-eared Bulbuls, Japanese Pygmy Woodpeckers, and an Asian Brown Flycatcher, but no particularly rare migrants. Someone apparently saw a Ryukyu Minivet there as well, but since no-one was in the business of pointing out birds to others I had no idea. 

Northern Pintail

Eastern Spot-billed Duck

Asian Brown Flycatcher

Warbling White-eye

Great Cormorant

Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker

Hawaiian Beetroot Webworm Moth

Some sort of leafcutter bee (Lasioglossum sp.)

Heliophilus eristaloidea

Pale Grass Blue

Megacampsomeris prismatica (I think), another scoliid wasp

The inlet at the Wild Bird Park

That was all I had time for, as I needed to head back to check out of our hotel and we flew out of Tokyo that night. I was really glad to have the opportunity to spend a week mostly in the same place and really explore the city and see the essential sights of Tokyo. Next time I'm in Japan I expect it will be to check out the real birding highlights–Hokkaido, the Ryukyu Islands, the Izu Ferry, or the high mountains of Honshu–but for now it was nice to Touch Concrete and see a little more of the human interest sites. And, of course, see a few birds on the side.