Showa Kinen Park

On Friday, two students from my Wednesday class, Yaeko and Miyako took me to Showa Park. Yaeko is a photographer and her good friend Kiyoko was the first tour guide at Showa Park and has been guiding tours there for 9 years. She met us at the park and spent the entire day showing the three of us around. It was an awesome day! Kiyoko knows every inch of the park and took us to all sorts of cool spots off the beaten path. The park is massive, even after 7 hours we only covered about 1/2 of it!! Parks are another thing the Japanese do so right! I've made a plan to visit as many parks in the Tokyo area as possible this summer with the kids. (They didn't come today).

There are lots of different themed areas in Showa Park, like the Children's Forest and Japanese Gardens, and there's a huge water park area called Rainbow Pool. We had such a great time just wandering around the park snapping pictures of anything and everything we saw. I took a crapload! Over 140!!! I uploaded some to Flickr if you want to check them out.
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Me in the Japanese garden

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I've gained about 20 lbs since we got here last August, tack that on to the 30 I never lost after Ethan was born and you've got yourself one fluffy mama! Because of that I've really resisted having my picture taken, but I realized while we were at the park that I don't want to leave Japan with no photographic memories of all the amazing things I'm getting to experience, so I handed over my camera several times during this trip. **Note: Since Otis has been gone (he's TDY for 3 weeks) I've made radical changes to my diet and have been excersicing everyday, including 3 days at the gym. Granted he's only been gone 8 days, but I've been consistent all 8 of those days, which is about a 7-day improvement over my ususal weight loss kicks!! I've already lost 6 lbs!!
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This is the Bonsai Master and sensei at Showa Park; at one time he tended the bonsai at the Imperial Palace! Now he's here and also does a show on TV teaching how to create and care for bonsai trees. Anytime I ask a Japanese person if I can take their picture, they always insist that I be in it too. Being photo-resistant like I have been it usually bothers me, but I know one day I'll be happy that I obliged.

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This display shows the progression of a bonsai tree begining at 3 years old on the far right, ending at 45 years old.

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While in the Japanese garden we stopped for tea. Above is a traditional tea sweet called natsugoromo, or "summer dress". It's a red, bean paste ball wrapped in a rice gelatin thingy. Contrary to my typical, close mindedness culinary preference and thoroughly unadventerous palate, I've really been trying to expand my cuisine experiences while I'm here. I've tried more new (and often unidentifiable) food in the 10 months that I've been here than I have in last 20 years of my life (I know, that's incredibly sad). That being said, I'm sorry, but this was so yucky!

It's pretty safe to say that matcha (green tea) is the national drink of Japan. Everyone loves it, you can buy it any and everywhere, and there's a green tea flavor of just about anything edible you can think of, gum and ice cream to KitKats. I sample it in every form I find, hoping I'll stumble on one I can tolerate, but again, eeeeewwww! I just can't understand the appeal!But I choked down both my snack and tea with a smile and repeated exclamations of "Oishii !!!"

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This is the view of Tachikawa from the highest point in the park, at the top of a big hill.

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This is the hike down the back side of the hill.

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It's so hard to believe that all this is smack-dab in the middle of the bustling city, and only a 15 minute drive from my house! I'm planning to go back often so I'm going to buy a 1-year pass, which is about $40.