Today we went to the Apple Store in Ginza, hoping to play with the newly released Apple iPad. Apparently, it’s not out yet in Japan or something as we didn’t see it in the store. After Apple, we walked over towards the Imperial Gardens. We stopped at the water park and watched the water fountains for a while. There was a seashell fountain that was pretty cool.
After the break, we walked over to the wrong gate since Daniel forgot which gate people are allowed into. We saw a snake sunbathing on some rocks though. After we got a few shots of him, we headed over to Otemon gate (the correct one). We saw some swans, ducks, cormorants, and koi fish in the mote, as well as some weeping cherry trees along the banks.
Once we finally made it to the Otemon gate, we saw several guardhouses that were used by samurai. We also stopped for some waffle ice cream. We then headed off into the lower parts of the garden which included lots of flowers and a pond.
There were some people doing water paintings in the pond area. There were an abundance of cherry trees and bamboo. Behind the pond was a small waterfall. After the pond area, we ventured towards the upper parts of the garden. There was an octogon music hall for the Empress’s 60th birthday. There were bird designs on it. Across from the music hall was the old stone remnants of large watch tower that was built and burned in the 1600s. We were able to climb t o the top of it to enjoy views of both Tokyo and the garden grounds.
We walked back down into the garden area and into the bamboo forest. I had noticed before but we were still not able to figure out what the strings between each bamboo was for. It was almost like a fence so you can’t walk through the bamboo trees.
We tried to get more waffle ice cream from the other rest building but they seemed to have sold out since the freezers were completely empty but we saw people eating them. After we left the Imperial Gardens, we walked over to Tokyo Eki. Apparently, the Tokyo station building looks like a British type building. Too bad it was under renovation so I wasn’t able to see any of the building.
So we hopped on to go to Harajuku for some crepes but when we arrived, we went into Family Mart for some waffle ice cream first. We sat and people-watched for a while. There was a foreigner with a couple Japanese translators (mom and daughter?) talking to some cops. More and more cops showed up; eventually an ambulance arrived. We concluded that the foreigner was injured since we saw him limping a bit towards the amulance. The amublance eventually took off with him. That entertained us for a while.
We then noticed some dude with a white straw hat, black rim glasses and a lot of tattoos, recruiting girls at the same intersection we were people-watching at. We watched him work for a while. Eventually we decided to follow him but we finally lost him when he went down some side streets.
After stalking the straw hat, tattoo guy, we gave up on crepes since the waffle ice creams we had gave us tummy aches. We decides to walk to Shibuya to find some dinner. We stopped at a street vendor thad selling egg cakes. We ordered and paid for 12 but insisted on giving us extras. Some of them were stale but overall yummy. I think the stale ones were the ones that gave me a massiv stomach ache though.
We walked around Shibuya and went into a yen shop (dollar store) looking for onigiri molds but we came out empty-handed. We looked for an Italian place for dinner but didn’t find one so we decided to take the train back to Harajuku and try the “Italian Tomato”. We both had spaghetti with meat sauce; it was decent.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel for the night. When we were ready for bed, Daniel set up his camera once again with his new AC adapter from Yodobashi for his automated picture project (time lapse).
Here’s a couple of shots from the Imperial Gardens:
pond area with Koi fish:
the large watch tower with views of Tokyo:
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乾杯!
