(Day 11) Koi no Kiss

Forewarning: Today’s blog will likely not be humorous. How can one conjure up funny things while staring at flowers? Well, not just flowers, but today I spent the whole day inside the wide expanse that is Shinjuku Park. The park isn’t free, but as I’ve learned throughout my travels, if it’s charging you, it’s likely worth seeing. This isn’t always true, but whatever.

Before I even headed out for the day, there was, of course, a wonderful breakfast in store.


I’m really going to miss this cooking everyday. I’ve been spoiled.

Once I had made my way down to Shinjuku, I followed my map until I reached the big ol’ park gates. When I saw all these people making their way inside with sacks of lunch, I thought that was a marvellous idea and headed to my nearest convenience store. I even won a free milk tea when buying food! Imagine trying to grasp that in communications. I really need to get some better Japanese in my repository.





As I mentioned, the place is utterly huge. I’m surprised they haven’t started subdividing it considering its hot location, but perhaps even Tokyoites demand a little greenery now and again. Anyway, there are several sub-parks that constitute the larger park and the first one I wandered into was the ‘Mother and Child’ park.







I had found a bench and plopped here to re-orientate myself. It was here where I saw Wonder Woman – the geriatric edition:


If this geri can make it through this place at a full 90 degree hunch, I really can’t feel much sympathy for other geris who complain. Amazing.

There was, of course, a Japanese garden, and so I decided I’d have lunch here. Turns out this is a popular place…with the Japanese. I suppose if they’d had a Canadian garden, I would have gone there instead, but considering that was before all my Olympic patriotism, who knows. Plus, knowing them, they would have just filled it with maple trees.










My convenience store prize! Too bad it was super gross and I threw most of it out. I have a hard time getting onboard the tea train.




Some geris spreading out beside me. They made sure to keep a safe distance.





I did a lot of eating and some reading for a few hours and then got up to continue my wander. Plus, I needed to try to burn some calories to work off the ‘Chip! Chop’.




This little friend looks like he wants a kiss.





They were having all these different flower exhibitions throughout the park. The geris were just snapping their cameras furiously! As you can tell, this park was overrun with the geri types.

















Wow that’s a lot of pictures already and no words, but here’s some more.







By this time, I was regretting such fashionable shoes to walk through a massive acreage of parklands. Dumb. They were sandals, but it was hot, they were rubbing…yeesh. I kept up my hobble as I arrived around the back end near the French gardens. Have you had enough yet? Well, too bad.








I’ve totally got that “painting the roses red” song in my head.





Okay, we are coming through the final stretch in the park now, I promise. If you’ve made it this far, then you must be someone I’m going to ask, “Did you read my blog?” I’m sorry. You are just trying to cover yourself.






?? I don’t know.

Emerging form the park was like going from a Laundromat into a dirt pile, only because the city has such a harsh backdrop in comparison.


Do you see those two grey towers in the distance? That’s my next destination.

I’ve spent so much money on this trip already, that today was all about cheap or free. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government towers offer a free view from their 45th floor, but first, I need to get there. As you can tell from the photo above, it was a bit of a hike in the middle of rush hour. Also, let me say that rush hour does not solely occur in the roadways. The sidewalks are equally clogged and you will very likely find people to dodge every few feet. The peripheral vision here is quite lacking. I actually had a complete, full-on, body contact run-in with a young man in a nice suit. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I do know that I blurted out “sorry” as I am a courteous person (though I’m sure it was totally his fault) and as soon as he realized I was a foreigner and breaking his stride, he quickly scurried on. Whatever man.

Even more interesting is the walking competitions people have with others headed in their same direction. Let’s say you have six blocks to walk and you notice that there are some people keeping up with your stride = let the walking games commence. They all try to out-walk each other. I had a few guys try to do this with me, but really, I was the only woman competing. I was so caught up.





Thankfully they had these coloured lines painted on the floor for bozo foreigners like me to follow to get down to the elevator to go up. You have to go through security first, and the friendly man who checked my bags as me if I was wanting to go up (in English). I said, “Hai! (Yes)” Apparently he found this amusing and asked me some other stuff, with my responses also being in Japanese. I get tired of being singled out, but even if he’d have asked me in Japanese, I wouldn’t have understood. Whatever. Going up!






Yoyogi Park. Damn that’s big! This must be what Central Park in New York looks like from above.



The observatory floor also had a little restaurant inside, but it wasn’t even near the edge, so what’s the point? It had a tacky souvenir shop too, but since it was full of Chinese visitors in there, I think they do quite well (no stereotypes implied… :) )





It’s that time of the day again to head home. I was told that dinner was at 7:30 and I was back with two hours to kill. I decided to hit up Parco (again) and check out if I could score some foods to tide me over.


Oh they have their Christmas trees out! Tokyo really does Christmas up nicely.

I ended up buying some shorts and a some weird baumkuchen from Muji. It was delicious though!



The bathrooms also had another sign for my amusement. When bringing babies into the washroom, please ensure their heads don’t fall off.



As I’ve had only one karaoke experience this trip so far and I only have a few days left, it was imperative to go waste some time away at the karaoke box. By myself. I only went for an hour and picked mostly English songs out of their antiquated book. “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, anyone? Me neither.




I got this sweet big room all to myself, but it reeked like cigarettes. Ew. I feel it was fated though, to receive this room:


My old area code. *Sniff sniff sniff*

Dinner was surely a treat tonight. It’s a good thing when I got to the table, it was all prettied-up like a Christmas present. I was that excited.



Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!


These are inari sushi. I love them so much I call them “Oinari sama” (very honorific Japanese.)



I pounded back like, 10 inari sushi. It was heaven. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Tomorrow I go a wild shopping spree, but there won’t be pictures of that. I don’t like to incriminate myself. I head to Harajuku/Omotesando and spend lots of money and eat lots of crepes. What’s not to love?