Today was take two for the Shinjuku Park, although it didn’t start off as smoothly as I could’ve hoped. I spent an absolutely insane amount of time trying to find an ATM (that’s “ATM” in Japanese; now go be a world traveler), and then finding one that would take my bank card, and then cursing the one that did for giving me my ¥10,000 in the form of one single, useless, and eminently losable ¥10,000 bill. In terms of equivalents, think going to withdraw $100 for walking-around money and getting nothing but a hundred-dollar bill; what on earth are you supposed to do with that?
Oh, but speaking of which, my wandering took me through the Isetan department store, and Prada’s got these amazing patent-leather slingbacks out that, if anyone’s looking for a Christmas present for me, have these adorable little low heels that would be totally 100% practical for all the walking I do.
In case it doesn’t show, Tokyo is all about the insane brand envy.
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog….
Plus then even though half the time I could see the park from the streets I was on, it took me nearly another hour to physically get to the entrance, during which I found myself at the Takashimaya Times Square tower no less than three times. The third time I stopped in the market in the basement to pick up a salad for lunch, and carried the sad little plastic bag with me until I finally found my approach, paid my ¥200 (lucky I still had a fair number of coins), and found myself here:
They take their wildlife quite seriously (my favorite part of this sign is the picture):
But wouldn’t you?
From the cypress grove I made my way to the traditional Japanese garden, which had really insanely large fish. Like, I’ve heard that goldfish’ll grow to fill whatever size bowl you keep them in, and my first thought was that this must be what they would look like in a lake:
Anyway, at the edge of the traditional garden, I stopped to eat my lunch, where I made friends with this guy (also, for the record, massive):
He flew up to my bench as soon as I opened my food, and just sat there, watching me. Now, we all know that I don’t feed birds, but the many signs around cautioning me against interacting with the wildlife at all made me hesitant to chase him away too forcefully…plus, in spite of being roughly the size of my torso, he was really cute.
But the wealth of little old Japanese men with pricey cameras walking around the garden weren’t nearly so reticent: the first one nearly startled me out of my skin by swinging his tripod at my bird. He missed and thumped a tree trunk, but that didn’t stop him from taking two more cracks at the bird when it stubbornly refused to fly any further than the opposite side of my bench. The next few followed suit; it was clear that they felt that crazy birds couldn’t be allowed to just do whatever they wanted in their lovely garden, but less clear whether the “bird” in question was the crow or the American woman who might theoretically sneak it a few noodles if the vigilantes ever let down their guard.
And then where would we be?
Eventually I looked up to see that the bird had silently made its way on to my bench. Beginning to feel more used than befriended, I packed up and left him to it.
Anyway, the whole thing was stunning. The city was always there…
…but you didn’t have to know about it:
Afterward I went to the Imperial Palace’s Outer Garden, which was…underwhelming, actually. I mean, there were a couple of lovely structures in view, and a bridge that has some obvious (although unexplained) history to it, but for the most part it felt like a giant exercize in Keep Out. Here’s the gist:
On the way back there was an inventive little fountain garden…
…which fortunately happened to be on my way to the kite museum. (“We have a kite museum?” Kanako asked at dinner; they don’t exactly, but apparently some restaurateur collected over 2000 kites along with a mass of related memorabilia, and eventually opened a showroom above his restaurant.) I’d read that it could be a little hard to find, so along the way I practiced the latest addition to my Japanese vocabulary: “Excuse me; is this the museum?“ Never had to use it, though; my directions were good and it was pretty incredibly obvious when I’d found the place:
With a bit of time before dinner, I tried out what became a routine over the next few days. I got all dressed and made up, and headed to the cozy lobby bar, which is dark and warm and surrounded by windows and water. There I ordered an excellent martini (which Nick claims to have taught them how to make on his last trip), wrote furiously on hotel paper for an hour or so, and then met Nick for dinner. On my way out, though, a thought occurred to me, and I slid my room key back into its pocket, handing over my ¥10,000 note instead. “Is this okay?”
It was.
