We started the day by eating breakfast at our apartment building. For 550 yen, you can arrange ahead of time to have breakfast ready for you. The breakfast was...different. I think today it was an American breakfast, so it was an omelet (which Mike couldn't eat), a salad, some carrots in some sort of dressing, a tomato, and a piece of some sort of ham. There was toast and coffee and juice, too, which I was really excited about! Two mornings with hot coffee in a row! It was nice to eat breakfast with Mike, too, although he didn't get going until 8 or so, which meant that he didn't get to work until 9:30 or 10. So, we probably won't be able to do that much. Breakfast is below.
After he left, I connected to the wifi in the lobby (that's the only place it works!!) and called my mom. It was so good to hear her voice, and I even got to hear my little brother for a little bit! After that, I got ready for the day and headed towards Shinjuku. Ok, ok, I know that I've been to Shinjuku every day since I got here...but today I took the train there...by myself! A huge accomplishment, since this was something I was sort of avoiding (hence my 2 mile walks there). After Mike showed me how to go from Shinjuku to our stop last night, though, I felt pretty confident. This time though, I exited the station at a different exit than we did last night. So, I thought I was on the South side of the station, when it turned out I was on the East side. My plan was to go to Shinjukugyoen, which is a huge park in Shinjuku with a Japanese garden, an English Garden, and a French Garden. Where I ended up instead was the red light district...oops! Luckily, it was 9:30 in the morning, so I was completely safe, just very confused. I've been told that even if it was night time, I probably would have been safe, too.
I walked past some shops called "American Boulevard", and then tucked away my camera and tried to find my way out of Kabuki (the red light disrict). After an HOUR of wandering the streets, I finally stopped and asked an older lady for help. It turned out that she spoke absolutely no English, which did me little good. I thought maybe she would be able to point on my map where I was, but the map was all in English too, and she evidently didn't read English either. It didn't deter her from wanting to help me though! We stood there for about 10 minutes, while she leafed through my book, studied the map, and talked to (herself? me?) in Japanese. She kept looking up at me, and I kept smiling and nodding at her, and she kept laughing and patting my arm. She probably thought I was an idiot. I had no idea what to do...keep standing there and nodding and smiling, or thank her and take the book? Luckily, a man who spoke English came upon us and asked if he could help. I wanted to hug him! But I didn't...we were still pretty close to the red light district and I didn't want to send the wrong message.
He pointed me towards the garden, and after thanking both of them profusely, I headed in the direction they pointed. 10 minutes later, I was finally there!
At this point my feet were throbbing in pain, so I sat on a bench after
getting a cold drink from a vending machine. These vending machines are
everywhere, which is so nice.
It cost 200 yen to get into the park. One bonus about this is that there are no homeless camps, which is something I've run into at the parks I've been to the last two days. After I paid I studied my map and decided to head for the Japanese garden first. On my way, I passed a bunch of roped-off grass with these signs in front it:
Evidently, the grass was being fertilized, and it was happy about it! That's one of the things I love about Japan, everything is cartooned, and it's happy! Even the pictures by garbage cans have cartoons of plastic bottles, happy that they are being put in the recycling bin. Anyways, the path led me to this heavily wooded area, which was kind of spooky. I found out that it was also heavily populated with mosquitoes.
The trees were really pretty, and there were so many different kinds that I haven't seen before
They had a lot of typhoon damage as well, and there were tree limbs down everywhere.
I spotted this building (I can't remember what it's called) through the thick trees, which I thought was a cool reminder that even though I was in the middle of the woods, I was also in the middle of a huge city.
After continuing down many paths thick with cool-looking trees,
I finally found the Japanese garden.
The garden was full of shrubs and ponds and had gravel paths and bridges that led all over the place
I came to a bridge, where saw something swimming towards me...you can see in the streak in the water below:
Turned out it was a school of coy fish! They were HUGE, and looking for food. They all came to the surface and kept opening and closing their mouths. It was kind of creepy.
I couldn't believe the wake some of them left. They were seriously at least 2 feet long!
The ponds were surrounded with lots of carefully manicured shrubs and trees, and a few cool sculptures, like this one:
I came to another bridge, and ended up in a conversation (if you could call it that), with the group of women you can kind of see in the picture below. I have absolutely no idea what they were saying, but one lady made stomping motions, and I think she was asking me if I was traveling, or a tourist. Or, she could have been saying that I was a giant. Either way, I nodded yes and smiled a lot. It was awkward.
I moved on, taking in all of the ponds. I read that tests have shown that the park is consistently 2 degrees cooler than the rest of the city. Cool, right? Apparently later in the summer, these ponds fill with water lilies, and its quite the sight. I'll have to stop back to see.
Some more coy fish...with a pretty orange one in the middle!
Here's some irises...to get the idea of what I saw yesterday there were 1500 of these, below! (I'm still really bummed the pictures didn't turn out!):
The lakes were all connected by streams, with even more fish:
Some azalea bushes. I think that the blooms were all destroyed by the typhoon, which is a bummer!
Not quite sure what this was...but it looked cool.
Here's the Kyu Goryo Tei, or Taiwan Pavilion. It was built in 1928 to commemorate the wedding of the Showa Emperor (Hirohito).
Inside it was an open-air pavilion of sorts, with lots of really pretty wood carvings everywhere. It overlooked the ponds.
Here's the view from inside the Kyu-Goryo-Tei:
You could just barely see the skyscrapers from Shinjuku in the background:
Here was a space, aptly called "Lawn Area". It was shockingly boring after going through the Japanese garden!
These trees were everywhere, I love how they bend and twist, it reminds me of the Wizard of Oz!
More of the giant fish...seriously...I still can't get over how big they were, I'm probably going to have nightmares.
I sat on a bench overlooking the "English Landscape Garden", which ended up just being a giant open lawn. I guess it kind of makes sense, it did kind of remind me of Hyde Park: lots of open green space.
I also examined my mosquito bites, which were really itchy and making me crabby. My feet were also really sore from my last few days, combined with my extra hour of being lost this morning.
I was trying to figure out where I wanted to head next, and then this guy walked in front of me and started doing what I think was Tai Chi. It was pretty cool to watch!
I moved on and found a clean up crew, gathering all of the downed branches from the typhoon. There were piles like this everywhere. The branches were about 6 feet long.
Then, suddenly, I was walking on a huge gravel courtyard, which lead up to the French Formal garden. This was my favorite part!
4 giant rows of Sycamore Tress (two on each side), lined a giant circle of rose bushes. There were at least 30 different varieties of roses, and most of them were blooming.
Here's a picture of someone walking next to the trees, to give you an idea of how huge they were. Also, you can see the buildings behind the trees, which were at least 20 stories high.
There was a couple there, taking wedding pictures. In this picture, he was helping her change into her wedding dress right there in the middle of the park, which was awkward, so I didn't take too many pictures.
The pictures of the French Garden speak for themselves, so I'll keep quiet while you scroll through these:
I sat down on one of the benches between the Cypress Trees to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my day. I had my Tokyo guide book with, so I was leafing through that when it started to rain. I pulled my feet up on the bench and sat under my umbrella and watched the rain fall on the garden. The guy on the bench next to me started singing, loudly. It was strange to be sitting there, staring at the garden, with this guy in a business suit singing in Japanese next to me. I wasn't sure what to make of all of it, so I just sat for awhile and took it all in.
Eventually I got up to leave, and saw that the bride and groom kept taking pictures, despite the rain. One thing I've noticed about Tokyo is that when it starts raining, everyone just takes out their umbrellas and keeps doing whatever they had planned. Even as I walked past one of the gates, people were still entering the garden with their umbrellas. I think in America most people would have decided that they couldn't do the outdoor activity they had planned.
As soon as the rain let up a little, I headed towards the restaurant that was located in the middle of the park. I saw this cool picture of the park, so you can see where I was. I came in on the bottom right, walked through the Japanese garden on the whole right half of the picture, then walked through the English Landscape Garden, which is the big open area in the middle, then went to the French Garden, which is the far left part that looks like a sideways wine bottle.
I found the restaurant and was standing outside looking at the menu when a herd of school children went through. Every single one of them stared and pointed at me! Bunch of jerks. Just kidding, I get it: I look different! I ducked behind a sign and then tried to take a picture of them once I was hidden..which is below...it didn't really turn out, but they were pretty cute, despite the fact that they were all probably making fun of me. One of their guardians apologized to me, which was a nice gesture but not necessary.
I went inside the restaurant and was confronted with a machine with pictures of the food and yen amounts. It was like a vending machine for food! The picture below shows the machine. A lady came over and helped me, which made me panic and push buttons quickly. Little tickets printed out, which I handed to the lady, and she took me to a table. In my button pushing frenzy I ended up pushing a button that said cold drink, and what I got was the beer pictured on the right below...coming in at 500 ml, it was huge compared to every other drink you get over here! And she gave me the cute little glass next to it to drink out of. Not that I'm complaining!
My food arrived, which ended up being a beef curry. It was fantastic! That pink stuff on the right was some sort of pickled vegetable, and the rice had a sprig of rosemary and a rose petal on top. My whole meal (including the giant beer) was 1050 yen, which is about 12 bucks. I thought that was pretty good. I sat there for at least an hour, waiting for my feet to stop throbbing. They never did. While I sat there, I decided that I was going to try to find the Hanazono Shrine, which should be just a few blocks from the garden.
I got up, made my way out of the park, and headed up to the shrine. I found it, on the first try! I think studying the map for at least an hour while I drank my huge beer helped. Here's the entrance to the shrine:
These guys were guarding it:
And these cute little lanterns lined the path:
The shrine at first glimpse:
A tiny little shrine was next to it:
Evidently, if you went down there, a nesting bird would attack you. I was glad whoever made this sign drew a picture...
After the big shrine yesterday, this one seemed pretty small, but it was something to see and it was the first orange one I had seen, so I am glad I went. One cool thing about it, too, is that it is literally in the middle of a super busy part of Shinjuku.
After I left the shrine, I headed down the street and snapped this picture while I was waiting at a crosswalk. I thought that building in the middle looked pretty cool! No clue what it is though.
Then I spotted a Starbucks sign. My friend Lindsey collects Starbucks mugs from cities around the world, and I've been trying to find one for her (no luck so far), so I decided to check it out, and ended up having to go up a few levels in a giant department store to get there. Even though I was wearing black capris and a nice shirt, I felt really under-dressed! Everyone there had really nice clothes on. After I ordered I had to wait around a bit for a spot to sit, but it was worth it! I scored a spot sitting at a bar next to a window, which overlooked the street. Here was my view:
Starbucks had the menu in English and in Japanese, which made me incredibly happy. I sat at the Starbucks for 90 minutes, sipping my coffee and watching the people on the street below me. It was very relaxing, and my feet finally stopped throbbing. After my drink was gone, I headed back to the train station and made it home. I only took two wrong turns out of the stations, but I got here. Then I took a nice long bath, and studied my maps some more. This is going to take me awhile to figure out, I'm sick of getting lost, but I'm pretty sure I'm not done getting lost. Oh well.
Mike got home and we headed to a little restaurant on our street, where a guy who was from Spain and spoke some English helped us. He was pretty funny, and when we told him that Mike was allergic to eggs and fish, he said "Man, you're F**ked in Japan!". It was pretty funny...not what we were expecting to come out of his mouth! We had some amazing pizza and a fantastic salad, and called it an early night.
It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I'm not sure if I'll have anything exciting to report. I walked so much today that I wore a hole in my new socks (bummer!), so I'm hoping to do some laundry and clean tomorrow. I promise I won't blog about that. This weekend, however, Mike and I are planning on heading to Inoshima and possibly Central Tokyo this weekend. Although I also mentioned that I wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland since it IS my birthday on Monday...we'll see what happens, either way, I'm very excited!
Have a great Thursday/Friday!
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