Friday 13 April 2012

Japanese Garden Delights

Today I have had a relatively quiet day although I did a lot more walking than I planned as I got my metro station exits wrong and had to walk a very long way to get to where I actually wanted to be.  Still, I`ve learned my lesson.  Like cutting fabric when you measure twice and cut once, on the Tokyo metro check the exits twice and walk once!
It has been a warm and sunny day today and I visited one of the gardens on my wishlist, the Korakuen Garden.  I enjoyed the cherry blossom and many other spring flowers, several butterflies and lots of birds. 






I was especially delighted to see a kingfisher dive across the pond in the Inner Garden while I was sitting and relaxing.  I spotted a bale of turtles
sunning themselves and pointed them out to a little Japanese girl, along with the Makaton sign for turtle - are you impressed little Sam?
After eating my bento lunch, some of which I recognised and one particular piece which I must find out about,
I think it might have been an elastic band, I explored the rest of the garden and then headed to my Japanese home for a lazy soak in the onsen.
This evening I have been packing!  There is going to be little time tomorrow as I am going out for a meal arranged by Mr Sawa and I have to have my suitcase ready to send to Fujino on Sunday morning while I am heading to Shinjuku to join the Japanese Textile Study Tour.  I wish everyone who is now on the way as safe journey and I`m very excited about meeting you all finally.
I will aim to post again before I leave the ryokan but I am not sure how easy it will be to post from Bryan`s.  If you don`t hear anything, don`t panic, I`ll store it all up for you!

5 comments:

  1. Your posts from Tokio are a gift to me. They are the perfect preparation for tomorrow's flight and the excitement is growing and growing...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh yummy, elastic bands :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ha ha, I think you have met squid. That's the way it it strikes me too. The weatherman had predicted rain for the day so you did a good job of holding it off 'till evening. Have a BLAST! (I know you will).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for another fun day, Lis. You are such good company.
    When you described the 'elastic band' in your boxed lunch I realised it was 'kampyo'. You can read about it here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanpyō_(food)
    I guess your lunchbox looked something like in this picture. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keruto/20101117/1289965395 where the yellow 'wrapper' over the rice is a very thin sheet of egg crepe.
    I am sorry the Kougehin centre was closed. After returning home I found this information for you on their website http://kougeihin.jp/center/guide
    You need to stay in Japan a bit longer to have time for them to open in the new location.
    Instead we spent some money buying fabric at Yuzawa-ya in Shinjuku, bought learner chopsticks at Tokyu Hands, saw the fantastic dolls for Boys Festival 5/5, had smoked salmon salad and at least I had a jolly good time.
    Did you get home all right and enjoy the sushi dinner?

    ReplyDelete

I really appreciate your lovely comments, ideas and opinions, they make my day. Thank you for visiting Piece'n'Peace,
hugs, Lis x