■130-year-old Ueno Station once stirred wanderlust in Japan's youth：
I can still picture in my mind middle-aged women carrying heavy loads on their back. I imagine they took a train from Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures to Tokyo to peddle their vegetables and other products. As a child, I often saw them when I went to Tokyo’s Ueno Station.
The station, which has served as Tokyo’s northern gateway, marked the 130th anniversary of its opening on July 28. It is much older than Tokyo Station, whose renovation was completed last year. To commemorate the anniversary, the melody to signal the departure of trains on platform 13, which serves limited express sleeper trains, changed to “Aa, Ueno-Eki” (“Ah, Ueno Station”).
