Today was a nice day! First up, I met up with Joyce Peterson for brunch.
After this, we walked around Yoyogi Park, which is a large park with lots of picnic space. Next to the park is a forest with a large Buddhist temple in the middle and multiple large Japanese gates. It’s a big tourist attraction, so we started exploring, then when Joyce had to make another appointment, I kept exploring. It was really nice to see her!
Within the forest there was a botanical garden which cost (only 500 yen!) to enter. Lots of flowers, ponds, and even some bonsai!
(I do wonder how old these are… Some bonsai take years to perfect, and still require maintenance. These looked quite impressive!)
There was an ancient well (spring) inside the park too that was less impressive than it was made out to be – just a little circular pond of water flowing into a creek that fed one of the ponds in the park. Before I could see the well, I had to wait in a line of people for about 5 minutes 😛
Outside in the forest there were a number of (attractions? things? monuments?) including this one with a ton of large paper lanterns.
Outside the park was an area of food vendors and a young Japanese guy beatboxing – I didn’t get a picture of him, but the sounds he was making were actually quite impressive.
After the park and exploration, I stopped at an “American Burger” place to see whether it lived up to the name.
I got a chicken based sandwich, and it was actually one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had, probably top three. It doesn’t look it, but with the jalepenos and fried chicken, it was delicious. (Maybe I was pretty hungry too…)
I was pretty tired of walking around (and just tired too – still catching up on sleep), so I went to my hotel (not the guesthouse – I had only booked for 6 nights, and when I went to extend my stay, the 29th and 30th were booked – so I got a different hotel for those two nights and booked the guesthouse again from the 1st through the 7th).
It was a private bed, but unfortunately it was also a very basic room, the bed squeaked each time I moved a centimeter, and the only light in the room made me feel like a lab rat. But, it was a place to sleep!
All for today! This post was kind of low effort, but honestly so was half of this day, so…
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