The view from our room at the Mesm Hotel was dominated by skyscrapers at night – but during the day, Hamiriku Gardens was the center of attention.

There was an entrance only fifteen minutes’ walk from the hotel, so we decided to explore the gardens this morning before leaving for Narita Airport and home. It was surprisingly rich in history; it was a feudal lord’s residence and later, a palace for the Tokugawa shoguns and then the Imperial Family, who donated it to the City of Tokyo right after WWII.

There weren’t many flowers in bloom today, but the park is overwhelmingly beautiful in its greenness. It’s well-maintained, and it looks like they do it the old-fashioned way, without power tools.

There are some statues in the park, like this one – it’s not a Minuteman, though that was my first thought when I saw it from a distance. It was installed to commemorate the Meiji Emperor’s 25th wedding anniversary.

The park has four teahouses, a sluice (still used to control the flow of water between Tokyo Bay and Shioiri-no-ike, the tidal pond in the center of the park), several bridges, and even a couple of old duck hunting areas, complete with blinds.

You can’t ignore the city that surrounds the park, but the two are surprisingly complementary if you find the right view.

The park also has a 300-year-old pine which is a must-see – unfortunately, we had to leave before we found it because it was time to go home.

We returned to the hotel, checked out, walked about 10 minutes to the Daimon Station, and hopped onto the Asakusa Line which took us directly to Narita in just over an hour for 1414 yen (about $9) each – much faster and cheaper than the Limousine Bus or a taxi would have been.

We left Tokyo with 171 yen in our pockets, empty Suica cards in our wallets, and many great memories. It’s good to be home, but I wish I’d had more time to explore!

The Imperial Palace offers a guided tour to the public; you can line up on the day of the tour and hope to get in, or you can apply for a place a month in advance and be sure of a spot. We took the second route, and today was our day; we showed up right on time and were ushered into the tour waiting room with no delay.

The official documentation says that the tour is conducted “mostly in Japanese”, but they broke us up into several language groups (Japanese, English, Spanish, and French for sure; probably others), each with a guide fluent in the appropriate language. We were also accompanied by several functionaries who were there to make sure nobody left the tour route.

The tour took us past several notable buildings, including the Imperial Palace itself, which is used for official events like State Dinners and the presentation of new ambassadors to Japan. The Emperor lives elsewhere on the grounds and was too busy to greet our tour today.

The tour lasted about an hour, and then it was sayonara!

As long as we were at the Palace, we decided to visit the Museum of the Imperial Collections, containing treasures garnered by the Imperial Family over many generations. The museum is still being built, but they’ve opened up two rooms on an interim basis, with rotating exhibitions. The current one is “Artwork which Adorned the Early Modern Imperial Palaces”, and there was a lot of artwork on display. Here’s a small sample.

It was raining pretty hard by now, so we dashed into a subway station to look for lunch. Subway stations here are often connected to office buildings with many restaurants, and that was the case this time. We decided to try Marugo because the pictures on its menu looked good. It’s a yakiniku restaurant, which meant we were served thin slices of beef to cook on a barbecue at our table – it was fun, tasty, and pretty inexpensive.

We thought it would be a good idea to stay inside for a while, so we took the train to the Takashimaya flagship store and wandered through about one-third of the store. We visited the food halls ($100 melons, anyone?), the art gallery, bought a scarf and a postcard, and even dared to visit the Pokemon Center, which occupies most of a floor of the East Building of the store.

I’d heard a lot about a very different store, Don Quijote, so we made that our next stop. It’s loaded with a huge variety of merchandise, much of it pretty schlocky. There were tons of suitcases (apparently tourists often go there to buy a suitcase to bring home their purchases), electronics, toys, “adult toys”, candy, Halloween costumes, clothing, liquor, and much much more. I bought a bag of matcha Kit-Kats and we called it a day.

We took the train to Kamakura today with our guide Toshi; on the way to the JR station, we passed a Really Big Clock.

We visited four main sites in Kamakura, starting with Engaku-ji Temple, the head temple of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism.

Next, we visited Hōkokuji Temple, otherwise known as the Bamboo Temple. It, too, is in the Rinzai Zen sect.

Our next stop was the main Shinto shrine in Kamakura, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. Photography wasn’t permitted in the shrine itself, but there was a lot going on elsewhere on the grounds, including a wedding.

After lunch, we continued on to the Great Buddha of Kamakura.

And our final visit was to Hasedera, which was built in 736 CE (the other sites we visited were relative youngsters, having been built between the 11th and 14th centuries). It is dedicated to Kannon, the deity who grants wishes in this life.

Speaking of wishes, we were very fortunate not to have to take a crowded train back to Tokyo – we all got seats for the entire ride!

Our plan today was to see the two places from Yulia’s tour yesterday that we weren’t able to visit because of our late start: the Nezu Museum and Gardens and the Shinjuku Gyoen National Gardens. Spoiler alert: we succeeded, but not without some bonus adventures.

We started by scouting out the elevators at the Daimon Station to see if we could get our luggage down to the track level when we leave on Thursday and take trains to Narita instead of the Limousine Bus – it looks hopeful. Then we headed through the fare gates and got on the train – easy peasy. But neither of us could get through the gate at Aoyama-itchome Station! Apparently our taps hadn’t registered properly at our origin station. It must happen frequently, because an English-speaking employee appeared within seconds, asked us where we’d boarded the train, and charged us for the segment we’d just traveled.

The Nezu Museum is an outgrown of its founder’s collection of pre-modern Japanese and East Asian art; it’s housed on the property that had been his family residence. They hold seven National Treasures in their collection; right now, they have a special exhibition of Japanese Art and Design centered on one of them, the Irises Screens by Ogata Kōrin, which took up two of the six galleries. The screens and other art on exhibit were wonderful…but they don’t allow photography in the galleries, just in the entrance hall and the gardens. The entrance hall features a collection of Buddha statues, like this one from the 6th Century from the Northern Qi Dynasty in China.

And the gardens were wonderful to walk around. There were lakes, shrines, tea houses, and irises which were in full bloom, just in time for the special exhibition.

It was a wonderfully clear day – so clear that I thought we might go somewhere to see Mt. Fuji. The obvious choice was one of the skyscraper observation decks, but I had found an article on Live Japan which suggested a spot that might be less crowded. It even gave directions in perfectly clear English:

If you walk north towards Ebisu Station from Meguro Station, go towards Ebisu Garden Place and descend westward from Fujimisaka (between Meguro-ku Meguro 1-Chome and Shinagawa-ku Kamiōsaki 2-chome). There, you’ll see Mount Fuji right in front of you.

It was easy to get to Meguro Station, and easy to find Ebisu Garden Place on the map, so we set forth. And got thoroughly lost; I couldn’t find any of the other things in the description on the map, and trying to translate random street signs wasn’t any help either. Eventually, we gave up and started looking for a restaurant – that was much easier, especially with Yelp’s help. Local India Ebisu looked plausible and wasn’t hard to get to, so we gave them a try. They were a great choice – English menus, a waiter who was happy to speak English with us, great food (with some differences from what we’d have at an Indian place at home, like including spicy French fries), and good beer. It was just what we needed.

We gave up on Mt. Fuji and got back on the train to go to Shinjuku and the gardens. We had to stand; it’s a good thing we were holding the straps securely because we were suddenly thrown forward and nearly fell. A few seconds later, the PA came on: “The emergency brake has been applied”. Gee, thanks.

The gardens were worth the effort of getting there. They’re huge, and although there were many many people out enjoying them, they didn’t feel crowded. We visited the Traditional Japanese Garden, the Taiwan Pavillion (donated by the people of Taiwan in the 1920s in honor of Crown Prince Hirohito’s wedding – Taiwan was a Japanese colony at the time), and the Formal Garden with its roses. Even the huge NTT Docomo building just outside the gardens added to the scenery.

It was getting dark, but we had one more stop to make: the Shinjuku branch of Takashimaya Department Store, in search of a yukata for Diane. They have beautiful yukatas in silk, for use in proper social circles and priced accordingly; luckily, they also have “souvenir” yukatas in cotton at much more reasonable prices for tourists. :-)

I would have liked to see more of the store, especially the food halls in the basement, but we were hot and tired, so we found our way to the proper subway line and headed back to the hotel.