Imperial Palace

Garden Pond

Another stop on our weekend tour of Tokyo was the Imperial Palace, home to the emperor of Japan. Getting a tour of the actual palace takes quite a bit of doing, so we settled for touring the gardens. A big bonus about visiting the East Gardens, it is free! And free things to do in Tokyo are a bit hard to come by.

Pink Blooms

One thing they do, which is really nice, is control the number of people in the gardens at any given time. As you enter they hand you a token which must be returned when you exit. There are a limited number of tokens, so if they don’t have any left, you must wait until someone else exits. The nice thing about this is the gardens, even on a national holiday, weren’t overly crowded. With the think crowds we were still able to enjoy our stroll and take in a little piece of the imperial palace.

Danielle and Dangly Flowers

Dangly Flowers

I have no idea what these flowers are but they were beautiful and smelled really good.

Danielle and Fountain

This fountain was just outside the gates of the gardens. It was really fun to wander around and get close to.

Unlikely Place

Climbing Up

For some reason I was just a bit amused by the strange way and places that greenery was growing.

Contrasts

Tokyo city in the distance. Strange to be in such a peaceful, serene, green place when you can see a huge megalopolis in the distance.

Rock Wall

I still love the rock walls.

Taking a Rest

And, sometimes, you just need to take a little rest after a long, hard day of traveling around.

Posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 5:47 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Imperial Palace”

  1. Your "Mom" says:

    The “Dangly” flowers are called Wisteria Floribunda (Japanese Wisteria). I think it is okay to call them Japanese Wisteria even if you are in Japan.

  2. danielle says:

    I don’t know, I think I might like my new name “dangly flowers” better than the actual name. Perhaps if I could start a trend, everyone should call them “dangly flowers”!

  3. Your "Mom" says:

    Can’t ben any worse than “Dead Nettle” or “St. Johns Wort”.

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