Japan Trip Day 5: Gyoen (Pictures)
Day 5 I was really beginning to realize how little time I had, but was also indecisive of where to go. Indecision left me wondering where I would be wandering that day. So, I pretty much just rode the train for a while, and got off. Turns out, I ended up at the Imperial Palace exit. So I decided to go to the garden. Sadly, that is pretty much the bulk of the pictures I took.
So, during the walk to the station or... Wait this was the day I was going to go to Shibuya Sky (A great place to view the Shibuya Scramble). And then I got down there to find out, you needed a ticket, and all tickets were sold out until April 1st. So rather, this was on the walk to Shibuya. Anyway, I found the cutesy bar holding orange creatures, I thought I would take a picture. Are they bears? Are they raccoons? Are they raccoon bears? I dunno. But I appreciated the novelty of them.
A little guardhouse in the Imperial Gardens. Okay, I say it is a guardhouse, but I’m not 100% sure what it was. It was a neat looking building, I had a camera, so I took a picture… Once more my stupidity led to me not taking a picture of the plaque explaining what this was. So, for the purposes of this blog it was a guardhouse.
These 5 get lumped together. The first one is a model of what I believe was the Imperial Palace. All of the subsequent pictures mention the making of it. The pictures of pictures are kinda blueprint-y things. This room had a fairly constant stream of people going through,so I didn't spend as much time in there as I would have liked. This also continues to establish my lack of taking pictures of the description of what I was looking at.
Bamboo. It's bamboo. Nothing other than bamboo. It was very bamboo-y. I’m also starting to notice that my numbering system really fell apart this day. One of the perils of using multiple cameras.
A weird miniature tree thing that I liked the look of. If you are seeing this after seeing the original gallery over on blogger, you may notice that some images have been cropped a bit. This one for example. Squarespace’s 20mb upload size has forced me to crop many of the pictures I took with my phone to get them down to size. The original file of this particular picture was 43.3mb… this is less than half the original picture. But, I don’t think the cropping hurts it at all.
Pictures of large carp. I believe these are koi, but I'm not certain. I do know that they are carp though. So they will be listed as carp. Also, I am getting really bad at mimicking the order from the original gallery. So, I’m sorry about that. But, everything is still staying in the same general block so… take what you can get?
This is a waterfall leading into the carp pond. I like waterfalls. Therefore you get pictures of a waterfall... even if it is man made. One of these photos was taken with my phone, the other was taken with my big camera. Can you guess which is which?
Miscellaneous pretty flowers. I liked the splash of color, so here it is. The program I have been using to crop photos will allow me to resize them instead? Why am I just now figuring this out. Well… I don’t think the cropping has hurt anything, so we’ll just move on.
This was a teahouse? I think tea house was what the plaque said. It doesn't really matter. I love this classic Japanese architectural design, so I took pictures. And it does sort of look like this building . So yeah. I’m going with teahouse.
Are we going back in time? What is going on here? That's right, I didn't sort the pictures properly, so pictures from the big camera came after the pictures on the phone. This is actually the entrance I took to get into the Imperial Gardens. I’m doing my very best to confuse you.
A statue. Is it a dragon? Is it a fish? I don't know! It shall be referred to as dragonfish! All glory to the dragonfish!
More entrance pictures. This is the second part of the entrance. The previous gate was a lie! It was just a gate to a gate! Gate-ception!
More sakura? You betcha. It should be noted that I have a tendency to capitalize “sakura” because it is also a name. And I think it is a fine name. So, yeah… if you see me capitalize it, that’s the reason.
It's a pseudo-gate after the previous two gates. Have yet to make it into the garden itself at this point. I am wondering if this is all just a series of gates, that will eventually lead to the gate out of here… Oh yeah, remember that building I thought was a guardhouse, you can see it in the center of this picture! Chronological order be damned!
I think this was like soldier housing or something? I liked the long building, and surprise didn't take a picture of the plaque telling me what it was. I know, I know… I'm an idiot!
Even the plant life here has that traditional Japanese architecture!
Those telltale pink-white blooms in a sea of green. Spring is in the air here.
A nice burst of color in the garden. I mean it is a garden, there are a lot of plant pictures.
Petals litter the ground
Red, like blood spilled in battle
This is bad haiku
Trees! Plants! People! Oh my!
Water. This was about the point in my walking around the garden that I got lost. But real talk here… I was pretty much lost the entire time I was over there, so this is nothing new.
Not arranging things in proper chronological order is starting to take a toll on my sanity. I have to upload each of these pictures, and I have to do it in such a way that it makes sense to me, for the sake of anecdotes and such.
This looks like it would be a calm place to sit and relax, don’t you think? I wish I had been able to relax here for a few minutes.
There is really not much to say about these pictures. The garden was really kinda relaxing, I wasn’t even mad that I was lost at this point.
I liked this streetlight looking thing. I kinda wish I could see it lit up at night. I mean, that is if it is actually a streetlight. It might just be a piece of sculpture.
That building from picture 2 up above, remember that? This is some details of the roof.
It’s a tree! It’s a building! It looks like a giant bonsai tree.
Walking to Kanda Myojin, I saw more Sakura and so I took another picture.
Kanda Myojin had a shrine pony! Look at the pony. LOOK AT IT!!!
Statue in front of the shrine. Aren’t Japanese sculptures interesting?
Sakura, and gate to the shrine. If you zoom in on either side of the entrance there is a statue of a horse. Plus horses on the walls above the horse statues. I don't recall a specific importance of all the horses. The gods enshrined here are gods of luck and fortune... and a guy who tried to overthrow the government in the long long ago. (Perhaps the 10th century?) This shrine was not originally located here, this is actually the third site of this particular shrine. And it has been rebuilt and restored many times over the year. I believe the last rebuild was in the 1920s.
A large rock! And information about the rock! I’m getting close to the end of this day. You’ve almost made it!
The torii gate as I am exiting the shrine grounds
I saw this sign multiple places in Tokyo, and every time I thought to myself "Isn't that nice of them... They have an Amish crossing". That is just my interpretation of this guy. I'm sticking with it indicating an Amish crossing.
A building where you can store all your Hello Kitty merchandise. Or possibly a place to store stuff that is just Hello Kitty themed. On the walls next to the door appear to be ads for some sort of maid cafe. Maid cafes seem to be a rather Japanese sort of thing. And they are somewhat popular in Akihabara. Akihabara is like the Mecca of tech geeks and otaku.
Let me eat cake! It is a pretty little cake. So many layers... One would need a big fork to get through all those layers, right?
WRONG! You get a tiny fork! So very very tiny. I wondered if this was some form of joke. "Oh, look at the giant with the tiny fork". Also of note, this was the cafe that won the "Where will I lose my hat" contest!
Those Japanese trains and subways are sooooo easy to navigate, look at this incredibly straightforward and easy to follow map of the trains around Tokyo. The blackened square in the middle of the map indicates my hotel. I’m pretty sure all those numbers are fares. At this point, my Pasmo card was still working, so I didn’t care much about the fares.
This was when I learned Square Enix was based across the street (well.. almost) from my hotel. If you know me, You know I loved the Final Fantasy series, up to I'd say...14? 15 can eat a bag of dicks, but the others were fun. I even enjoyed 11. Played that one for a long time on the PS2 I think it was on the PS2. These two items are related to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Interestingly enough, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were rival RPG franchises... until Square and Enix merged and made them all part of the same umbrella. Plush Yuffie is sitting next to me on my desk, while the slime sits on top of my PC tower with Nezuko, Wanda, and a dumpster fire.
If you know, you know. If not, don’t worry it is a nerd thing.
Japanese beer! I ordered it because why not? Black lager sounded awesome. And it wasn't bad. Yuffie is hanging out on my table, shaming me for my drinking. That judgmental ninja.
This particular cocktail was called Shiva. Normal people might think "Oh... a drink named after the Hindi god of destruction." Those of us who played Final Fantasy will think, "Oh! Shiva! That explains why it is blue! I remember summoning her a lot in Final Fantasy."
Pancakes! Moogle pancakes! Well... Chocolate and banana pancakes, with ice cream, and whipped cream, and little chocolates. This was a very grown up dinner. I make responsible nutrition choices! More pancakes need to be served with ice cream.
This marks the end of day 5. When I left Artnia (You can see the name behind the moogle pancakes) it was storming pretty decently, and I was watching people get their umbrellas inverted. I was not afraid of the water, and my umbrella managed to stay umbrella shaped
