30th of April: Tokyo - Korakuen, Hama-Rikyuu

Tokyo Dome (a giant baseball stadium) and its amusement park are located next to the station called Korakuen.

That's because Korakuen garden was built here some 300 years before the Dome, and still exists. This garden is one of the three surviving Tokyo gardens built by daimyo (lords of the area), the other two being Rikugien (we've seen it a few days ago) and Hama Rikyu (the biggest of the three, located next to Ginza area)

The entrance to Korakuen is actually quite far away from the station! But the walk isn't unpleasant. It's a chance to enjoy the urban landscape

Korakuen is lush, but its vibes are completely different from the Rikugien. It was built not for Japanese poetry appreciation, it was built to reflect on the ideas of Chinese philosophy.

The garden is welcoming, but its peace is violated by the views of the Dome and, occasionally, violent screaming of people enjoying the attraction rides nearby.

Most of the paths are paved with stone in the Chinese style. Most of the buildings in the garden were destroyed in earthquakes, fires or air raids, but the ceremonial gates still stand.

Korakuen is anything but showy. It is expensively simple, being a residence of the son of Tokugawa clan.

A small shrine protected by two statues of foxes is completely unassuming. It might be two or three centuries old, who knows

The central building in the park isn't a tea room, but a replica of an ancient sake shop. There is a tea room outside of the park, though.

There is a rice paddy next to the sakeya. The lord of the area has built the paddy to teach his family of the hardships the farmers under his rule faced. Nowadays the paddy is looked after by the elementary school next door.

There's a well that is called "the fountain of youth". It is said that the well never runs dry in the draught and never overflows in the rain. You can't drink from it.

Korakuen doesn't reveal its secrets easily. You have to get to know it first... You will not regret taking the road less travelled

All the roads lead to rivers, though.

The common route is also pretty.

Going off the beaten path is still very, very rewarding.

This is a garden where one must stay mindful of their surroundings. Good luck crossing the river looking at your phone ;)

Korakuen is great. I think I still like Rikugien better, but Korakuen is beautiful and majestic in its own right.

... If only the view of the sky wasn't ruined by the buildings around.

Let's go someplace else! Don't forget to get a stamp from the train station~

Finally, Hama-Rikyuu garden. Built on reclaimed land over 300 years ago, it was an important residence for the main Tokugawa clan. Then Meiji owned it and used as a guest house for important people (for example, a US president stayed here for a month), but it burned down in the Great Kanto Earthquake, and then again in air raids of 1945. It was rebuilt and reopened as a public park in 1946.

Hama-Rikyuu is immense; twice as big as Korakuen and Rikugien combined. Perhaps this is why it has multiple picnic areas where picnic blankets are allowed?

Hama-Rikyuu doesn't have all that many spectacular views. One of the biggest attractions is an award winning statue of the Meiji emperor.

There is a large tea room on an island, but it isn't serene. The park is surrounded by skyscrapers all around - Ginza, Tsukishima, and so on. There's active river/sea navigation, too, and the ship sound signals are annoyingly loud.

There is a small hill called "View of Fuji", but you cannot see Fuji from it. Not in this era, anyways.

Tokyo Bay can be seen from the park. Nothing special

Such a large pond, not a single turtle in sight

The garden has a bit of history preserved: duck hunting grounds

The hunting was overly complicated: fool the ducks, grab them with a net?!

There are nice spots in Hama-rikyuu, like this bamboo path, or a plum garden, but it's all ridiculously large and somewhat poorly planned.

There aren't that many flowering things, either. Not this time of year. The plums and the cherries are all green, and the flower garden was empty, too.

There is a shrine that has a mini-shrine stored in it.

Perhaps, the nicest part of the garden today was a 300-year-old pine tree that was planted by the Tokugawa shogun himself (allegedly).

Time to go home. The train station has a lovely mosaic...

And a super uncanny guidance robot that offers you to take a selfie with it!

Funny thing; the robot is marked with a green ginkgo leaf, it is a symbol of Tokyo Metropolitan area from 1989.

However! It is not the only symbol of the Tokyo Metropolitan. There is also a crest, used since 1943. It sometimes can be seen on manhole covers, light poles and so on. As a crest, it doesn't have a colour, just a shape

The crest is called "monshou", and the symbol is called 🥁 🥁 🥁

....

"shinboru"

It's been some ten days since we've arrived, and we haven't paid our respects to a single shrine yet! We've seen plenty shrines that weren't accepting any donations or didn't have any priests, but we've sort of avoided all the big ones so far.

Tonight we've had half an hour to kill waiting for a coin laundry to do its job, so we decided to check out a small-ish shrine next to the hotel.

The shrine has a large display with a manual on how to pay respects correctly.

The shrine area has seven shrines, and enshrines about a dozen of Kami (including a legendary hero Yamato Takeru, Japanese figure similar to the king Arthur; this is far from the only shrine for him, though). The shrine is 700 years old, founded in 1321, but it was damaged in the WW2 and only rebuilt in 1960s.

Enas (boards with a wish) and "bad luck" omikuji (fortune-telling slips) are plentiful. We couldn't buy one, because we were too late, and the shrine shop was already closed. The website of the shrine reminded us that being 33 and 37 years old is a bad luck for women, and we should at least get ourselves protective amulets. But, again, the shrine shop was closed, and so the bad luck has to stay with us for a little bit longer, he he.

Bad luck didn't make us wait. We were seated at the most unauspicious table at the Denny's (44!), and the register bugged out on our order. Nina has noticed that something is weird, and had to explain the waiter that 451+2618+836+528+495+693 is 5621 yen, not 9119. 😄

"Huh, it is wrong, isn't it", said the waiter, and fixed it for us.

A random locomotive. It was built in 1945 in Osaka, worked hard in Hokkaido for a few decades, until it found its rest in this small park in 1973. It looks like the locomotive hasn't been maintained much in the last 50 years, what a shame.