Prime Time at Tokyo’s Ueno Park Is a Rich Show of Cherry Blossoms : It’s a lovely stretch of nature hugged by high-rises, but the real draw is the people.

The challenge: Our friends had a stopover in Tokyo en route to a business meeting in Hong Kong. With a little less than 48 hours to spend in Japan, they wanted to find a concentrated cross section of the country that would give them a feel for what Japan is all about--and would also be fun. Oh yes, by the way--they had no time to travel, and they didn’t want to spend much. Could we think of a place where all this could be done?

The solution: In a word, Ueno.

The lively, teeming area around Tokyo’s Ueno Station offers a well-rounded and downright delightful look into the two faces of Japan, the ancient feudal country and the modern economic superpower.

On the high hill above the station, Ueno Park is a combination of Washington’s Mall and New York’s Central Park, a lovely stretch of grass, flowers, trees and ponds that is home to several national museums and one of the premier zoos on Earth.

At the base of the hill is a fascinating milelong shopping district, Ameya-yokocho, which has been designated the best (perhaps we should say the only ) bargain center in all Japan. This tribute was accorded Ueno by a couple of people who ought to know: Suzy Gershman and Judith Thomas, authors of the “Born to Shop” books. “Everything you want, except pearls, is here at the best prices in Japan,” they write.

And since Ueno Station is the starting point for all bullet trains (and all other trains) headed north of Tokyo, the neighborhood is always tremendously alive with people and commerce. As Dr. Johnson said of London, anybody who is bored in Ueno must be bored with life.

This is always a wonderful place to visit, but just about now is Ueno’s prime time. From late March to late April, the slopes of Ueno Park blossom forth with Japan’s richest concentration of cherry blossoms. That, in turn, attracts huge concentrations of Japanese people.

Each day of the cherry blossom season, more than a million people come to Ueno for hanami , or flower-viewing excursions. By midafternoon, every square inch of park is covered with picnic blankets where parties of 10 or more gather for lavish lunches under the delicate cherry boughs.

Getting to Ueno is simplicity itself. (It’s a three-syllable word in Japanese--pronounced ooh-eh-no--but you’ll do fine if you simplify the pronunciation to way-no.) Ueno Station, or Ueno eki , is the second-busiest train station on Earth, according to the Japanese Railroads (JR), ranking just behind Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, a few miles down the track. It is a terminus for buses, Japan Railways trains, private rail lines and two subway lines. Located at the heart of Shitamachi, the oldest part of Tokyo, Ueno is a 12-minute subway ride from the Imperial Palace at the heart of downtown. It’s easily accessible from any Tokyo hotel.

Inside the sprawling Ueno Station, you will see a few members of a small community--Japan’s homeless. A wealthy country where family obligations are taken seriously, Japan has very few people who are down and out. But a half-dozen or so people who fit that description live in the corridors of the station, providing Americans a sad recollection of home.

When you leave the train, bus, subway or whatever, the best way to start seeing Ueno is to head for the most popular meeting place in all Japan. That would be, of course, the base of Takamori Saigo’s statue, on the hill rising above Ueno Station. If you go up to anybody on the street and say “Saigo?,” they’ll steer you in the right direction.

Takamori Saigo (pronounced sigh-go) was one of the 19th-Century samurai who toppled the last shogun and led Japan’s rapid modernization in the period known as the Meiji (may-jee) Restoration. He led a famous battle on the Ueno hills in 1868.

Saigo eventually turned against the modernizers and led a futile counterrevolution. It was bound to fail, and did. But like many noble failures in Japanese history, Saigo became a folk hero, a status he still holds today.

The statue depicts a determined, square-faced soldier in kimono, with a determined, square-faced bulldog pulling on a leash at his side. When the statue was finished in 1892, Saigo’s widow complained that it didn’t look anything like the man. Today, though, that statue in Ueno Park is such a powerful image that when a TV network made a miniseries on Saigo’s life in 1990, the producers deliberately found a man and a dog who looked like the famous statue.

From Saigo’s statue, a short walk through the park will take you to the Ueno Park zoo--where you can see Japan’s famous pandas--to the national aquarium or to any of several big, interesting national museums, arranged around a grassy quadrangle quite reminiscent of Washington’s Mall.

Along the way, you may be tempted to try the neighborhood’s local treat, pahnda kaykee , or panda cupcakes. These small sweets filled with a sugary bean paste--rather weird to the Western palate--are made right before your eyes by various Rube Goldberg-style robots, which automatically pour the batter, dump in the bean paste, fry the cake and flip it out when the cooking’s done. It’s a perfect insight into modern Japan; to think that they would build such complex high-tech machines dedicated to such a simple task!

For museum hopping, we directed our friends first to the Tokyo National Museum, the most Asian of the big museums here. It’s a wonderful collection of art and artifacts from Japan, China and India.

Among other things, this is a wonderful place to get a feel for shodo , or brush writing, the ancient art of painting the ideographic characters that comprise the Chinese and Japanese writing systems. The national museum has scrolls by famed calligraphers, ancient and modern. Even if you can’t read the stuff, you will appreciate why the two nations still cherish this cumbersome alphabet.

Stored, appropriately, in a separate museum is the national collection of Western art. Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais” is in the museum’s front yard. Inside is a Catholic collection with many French impressionists.

Modern Japanese works of art are the metier of the nearby Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and across the big fountain from that museum you can’t miss a big old steam locomotive on the grass, the landmark that steers people to Japan’s National Science Museum. The museum’s displays are interesting, with some minimal English labeling. What’s really worth watching in the Science Hall, though, are the troops of youthful soldiers in black military uniforms, marching obediently in their ranks.

Soldiers in a science museum? No, wait! Those ordered ranks of uniformed young people aren’t soldiers; they’re students from junior highs and high schools all over Japan. No matter where they come from, the school uniforms that every student wears every day are just about the same.

They all dress alike and move in precise battalions. It’s a sight worth seeing for any visitor to Japan, because this is what Japanese education is all about--training the young to fit into an intensely regimented society. The famous dictum drummed into every student here early on is that “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” By the time the students visit Ueno Park with their high-school classes, nobody is sticking out.

The people you’ll see strolling Ueno Park are kids, young lovers, families from rural towns touring the big city, older folks enjoying a day in the sun. But when you leave the park grounds and go down the concrete steps back toward the station, you’ll find a different breed of people: shoppers--deadly serious shoppers.

On a long, narrow street just across from Ueno Station is the big, colorful arch marking the entrance to Ameya-yokocho, the busiest and best bargain center in all Japan. If peace, quiet and elbow room are your thing, do not enter. But if the idea of a sprawling, cacophonous, irreverent Asian bazaar jammed sardine-style with shoppers, sellers and onlookers strikes your fancy, you will love Ameya-yokocho.

Be warned--these are not the sedate surroundings of the elegant Tokyo department stores. On Ameya-yokocho, the hawkers will thrust live octopus in your face--”1,000 yen! 1,000 yen!” They will dare you, in Japanese and broken English, to buy a pint of soy-pickled eggplant--”500 yen! 500 yen!” They will taunt and shout and roar all day long, and if you don’t come up with any money, they’ll quickly move their attention to the next guy.

For just over a mile, beneath the elevated railroad tracks all the way to Okachimachi Station, Ameya-yokocho is lined with small stalls selling everything from squid eggs to top-of-the-line cosmetics. The street is full of Gucci, Vuitton and Eddie Bauer labels, but as the prices will quickly tell you, virtually none of that stuff is the real thing. There’s a McDonald’s here, too, that is the real thing. Invariably overrun with customers, it gives the lie to the myth that the Japanese won’t buy American goods.

Our friends’ favorite stop was the stall where the salesman stacks candy bars one atop another--American, Japanese, Chinese brands, all lumped together--and offers the whole package for 1,000 yen, or about $7.50. Although the price for the stack is fixed, the guy always seemed to be adding more candy to the stack.

“I’ll put another one on here!” he shouted. “And now another one!” It’s a terrific act, even if our friends didn’t really get much of a price break when they finally figured out what that 1,000 yen bought.

By the time they’d seen Ueno Station, Ueno Park, the zoo, the museums and the shopping streets, our visiting friends were exhausted. But they weren’t broke. They had spent two rich days in the heart of Japan and never had to worry about missing a train or finding the right bus.

As we walked them over to the Skyliner train heading back to Narita airport (it leaves from Keisei Station, right next door to Ueno Park), our friends couldn’t get over the irony. They hadn’t seen the palace, or the Great Buddha, or Kyoto, or Mount Fuji. But they genuinely felt that they had seen Japan.

GUIDEBOOK

Finding Tokyo’s Ueno Park

Getting there: Ueno Station is three stops north of centrally located Tokyo Station (east of the Imperial Palace) on Japan Railways Yamanote Loop Line. Or you can reach it via the Ginza and Hibiya subway lines. The private Keisei Railways operates special trains from Ueno Station to Narita Airport and back.

In the park: Ueno Park spreads out west of Ueno Station. Saigo Takamori Statue is immediately west of the station, near the southern entrance to the park. The Ameya-yokocho shopping street (look for the big sign opposite Ueno Station) is a narrow lane that runs along the west side of the elevated JR tracks, from Ueno to Okachimachi stations.

For more information: Contact the Japan National Tourist Organization, 624 S. Grand Ave., Suite 1611, Los Angeles 90017, (213) 623-1952.