Ueno Park

This hill was Kaneiji, a temple complex built to protect Edo Castle from the unlucky northeast, and in 1868 it was where the last loyalists of the shogunate made their stand. The Battle of Ueno lasted a day and burned most of the temple down. Five years later the land became one of Japan's first public parks.

What went up on the cleared ground is the densest concentration of museums in the country. The Tokyo National Museum sits at the north end; the National Museum of Nature and Science and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum are a few minutes away; and the National Museum of Western Art, designed by Le Corbusier and opened in 1959, is a World Heritage building in its own right. Ueno Zoo, the oldest in Japan, opened in 1882 and has the pandas.

Fragments of the old temple survived. Ueno Toshogu, a gold-leafed shrine from 1651, came through the battle, the earthquake and the war untouched, and the Kiyomizu Kannon-do borrows its design from the temple in Kyoto.

At the southern end, Shinobazu Pond splits into three: rowing boats on one part, lotus so thick in August that the water disappears, and the Bentendo on its island in the middle.

Around 1,000 cherry trees line the central avenue, and hanami here is a serious operation, with junior colleagues sent out at dawn to hold ground sheets for the evening. It is loud, crowded and worth seeing once. The rest of the year the park is calm, and a museum day here is one of the best things to do in Tokyo in the rain.