I have heard that Japan is apparently having a bit of a tourism problem, in the sense that they have too much tourism. Nice spots to visit in Tokyo have gone viral on social media, and I have noticed that some stores and attractions have insanely long lines while other comparable spots have no wait.

I have two philosophies that are applicable here. The first is that I value my time a lot, and if something involves waiting in line for a long time, I see that as a waste of time and will generally tend to be avoidant of it. The second is that I like supporting the “little guy” and helping smaller and less popular businesses sell their products and services, thus earning more cash runway to have an extended opportunity to prove themselves as a viable competitor in the open market. Long story short, I am very pro-capitalism and like seeing healthy capitalism at work.

I ended up applying this approach into practice a lot in Tokyo, because there are a lot of spots that are overbooked and overcongested, while something of seemingly equal quality and price just down the street is empty.

One of these examples was an “observation tower” experience. I don’t know if this is just my algorithm on social media and coincidental timing in-person, but Shibuya Sky seems to be the extremely popular, go-to observation tower nowadays. They do have a unique open-air deck at the top, but whenever I would be in that area, I would notice that they had signs up at the base of the tower notifying prospective sightseers that they had already sold out of tickets for the day.

Instead, I decided to go to 六本木ヒルズ展望台 東京シティビュー, which is the Tokyo City View at Roppongi Hills. This allowed me to get a comparable observation tower experience with no wait. I paid 2,400円 for my on-site admission ticket, which was a little bit over US$15. I could’ve saved 200円 if I had pre-purchased a ticket online, but this was a relatively spontaneous trip, and there was no line in front of the kiosk, so I just bought my ticket on-site.

I slowly walked around the entire building, taking photos of the stunning view from all the different angles I could. The density of Tokyo made this even more visually pleasing compared to other observation decks I’ve been to in the United States where the buildings were more spread out.

Complimentary with the purchase of my ticket, I was also able to see the “30th Anniversary Exhibition: All of Evangelion.” Apparently Evangelion is a Japanese anime. I had never heard of it before, but everyone else was going absolutely bonkers over it, so I assumed this was important enough that I should take some photos. This exhibit had more people in it than the observation area, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people bought an observation tower ticket just so they could see this Evangelion exhibit.

(If you’re wondering, these Evangelion pictures are lower quality than the other ones in this blog post because this exhibit only allowed photography with smartphones and prohibited the use of standalone cameras.)

After being completely clueless but still having a good time looking at sketches and drawings of anime characters, I looped back out of the exhibition area and exited the paid section by going through the gift shop.

I didn’t buy anything, but I did browse their goods; it seemed to be fairly generic souvenirs, and I was surprised that they didn’t have anything that was more unique and customized to the Tokyo City View observation deck or the Roppongi Hills building.

A short distance away from the exit of the gift shop was a restaurant. It looked pretty nice and I wanted to dine in so I could thoroughly complete my Tokyo City View experience, but it was empty inside and there was no host at the front, so I figured that it was probably only open for dinner or something, and I walked onwards.

Next door (but still before descending from the observation floor), there was a café themed after Evangelion, presumably as part of the 30th anniversary celebration. I later found out that they are usually called “The Sun and The Moon,” but they appear to have rebranded temporarily to the All of Evangelion Café as part of the collaboration.

The food they served was also themed after Evangelion. They had a small collection of dishes and alcoholic beverages; I ordered some chicken curry rice and just opted for water.

The total came to ¥1,950, which was just under US$13—reasonable for United States pricing, but a little high for comparable food in Japan, though the markup was understandable due to it being a special partnership at a tourist hotspot and potentially needing to pay intellectual property licensing or royalty fees.

The chicken curry was very good compared to United States standards, but considering how amazing the food in Japan has been overall, this was mediocre when rated against other Japanese food.

After finishing my meal, I went back down to the lower floors, walked around a bit to check out some of the shops inside Roppongi Hills, then headed out for the next adventure of the day.

I feel like going to an observation deck is somewhat of a cliché thing to do in a city, but I think it was absolutely worth it in Tokyo. I’ve lived on upper floors of high-rise condominium buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, and I’ve gone to a lot of observation towers across the United States, so I’ve become somewhat desensitized to stunning views from high vantage points. With that being said, Tokyo was special in that it is such a dense city that you can just stand there staring out the window for a long time, and you will never run out of interesting things to look at below.

One of my favorite things about Japan is how densely everything is packed. I heard that there are a handful of reasons for this, the primary ones being the scarcity of land due to Japan being an island country and a lot of it being mountainous and unbuildable, as well as plots of land frequently needing to be split into smaller plots and sold off for descendants of landowners to be able to afford the inheritance tax.

As a side effect of these aforementioned matters, a lot of buildings in Japan are fairly tall and don’t take up much lateral space. This means that you can walk past a lot of different buildings in a short distance, so you’ll end up running into a lot of different stores, offices, and museums even within just a couple blocks, just to name a few examples.

While I was walking between Shinjuku City and Shibuya one day, I randomly ran into a large stadium that had many long lines of children walking in front of it. I figured that they were on some kind of field trip for their school and they were receiving a tour of the stadium. After checking the map, I discovered that it was 国立競技場, the Japan National Stadium.

I browsed the stadium’s website to see if there was a way for me to join on this tour, but it seemed like there were no public tours available for that day. However, I saw that a related building—日本オリンピックミュージアム, which is the Japan Olympic Museum—had regular operating hours during which it was open to the public. It was not too far away, just on the other side of スタジアム通り, which is pronounced Sutajiamu-dōri and roughly translates to Stadium Street.

After a quick walk to the museum, I paid the very low 500円 admittance fee, which is the equivalent of just over US$3.00.

Right by the entrance of the museum, there was an art piece with the Olympic rings constructed with various different materials and various different sculpting methods. There were also some fun signs next to it to be used by people who wanted to take advantage of the photo opportunity.

A few steps deeper into the museum was the track and field section with some equipment on display—batons, a hurdle, a starting block, and a javelin.

The next section covered apparel.

The apparel section had a glass-protected display case that had a row of shoes that had actually been worn at Olympic events by Olympic athletes. Most of them also had notes written on them, presumably by the competitors who wore them.

Beyond the apparel section was an area dedicated to the Deaflympics. Prior to my visit here, I did not know that there were more variants of the Olympics beyond the Paralympics, so I learned something new because of this exhibit. From what I gathered from these informational posters, the idea of the Deaflympics is for athletes to not use any hearing aids or implants so that everyone is on a level playing field without their sense of hearing, and their performance is strictly determined by their mastery of their other senses, primarily their visual acuity.

To go on a somewhat related tangent, one of the things that I really liked about Japan is how elegantly accessibility-friendly it is.

In the United States, I’m used to accessibility features sticking out like a sore thumb. More specifically, accessibility and accommodations for the disabled always seems like an afterthought, where infrastructure was built without accessibility in mind, and then accessibility was tacked on as a secondary consideration solely for the purpose of complying with ADA laws.

Adjacent to that, I’ve started to see and feel that some of the more extreme liberals and progressives in today’s political climate will use the concepts of accessibility and accommodations for the disabled as a way to virtue signal and feel good about their own selves, while in reality, they’re just causing more discomfort. I have always seen those with disorders or disabilities to be regular people just like everyone else, but they simply happen to have an extra set of challenges to address in their day-to-day lives. Thus, it is unsettling to me when activists pretend like they’re standing up for a good cause, but it only just ends up objectifying and drawing more unwanted attention to those who have a disability.

In Japan, it feels like everything was built with accessibility in mind from the ground up. Everything is very well-integrated, and it feels like it’s a part of everyone’s baseline culture to be considerate and accommodating to those who might need a bit more help with whatever tasks they happen to find challenging… but most importantly, they do it without thinking it’s anything special or honorable.

Connecting this back to the Olympic Museum, although there was this section dedicated to the Deaflympics, it seems like it was only separated out like this due to the 2025 Summer Deaflympics taking place in Tokyo. Beyond this, mentions of the Paralympics or other variants of the Olympics were just integrated in with everything else like normal, which I thought was nice.

In the corner of the first floor, there was a little library section with a bunch of books. This area had some seating that you could use if you wanted to read any of the available literature. One of the seats was occupied by a set of Olympic-themed plush toys.

After seeing everything on the ground floor, I went up to the second floor. At the entrance to the new area was a projection screen with multimedia covering the history of the Olympics, which was accompanied by some more traditional museum exhibits and displays further explaining how the Olympics became what it is today.

As an American, of course, I had to find the USA pin.

Hanging on one of the walls was a bunch of torches. At first I thought they were just replicas, but after doing some more research later on, I found out that they were most likely authentic torches used for the Olympic Torch Relay. Apparently they manufacture a lot of these for each relay, so it would make sense that each country would be able to keep the ones they used.

One section was dedicated to showing the evolution of the gold medal. There were a set of medals on display that definitely were replicas, but there were also a few authentic ones on display in a glass case.

The next section was split off into its own room and was dedicated to the various different ways Japan participated in the Olympics as a host. There were dioramas of past stadiums, maps showing the route of past torch relays, and even artifacts from past events.

This next area was my favorite due to its interactivity—the simulation room. There were a handful of stations set up in front of large screens and overhead projectors where you could try short segments of various different Olympic sports to see just how inhumanly incredible the trained athletes actually are at these events.

The far back section had a simulation of the pistol shooting event, which I of course had to try out. I tried it once, and it said that I was only about 70% as accurate as an Olympic athlete, which I thought was catastrophically horrific. … Then I watched someone else try it out and her score was 4%, which I guess made me feel less bad about myself.

Nearby, there were a couple displays showing how much goes into building an Olympic athlete. It shows and acknowledges each athlete’s support system that is critically important to making sure the athlete performs their best.

Next up was a little theater room where I could take a quick sitting break and watch a short film about the Olympics. I didn’t take any photos here because it was just a video, but the theater room had a very wide screen that wrapped around the room in a crescent, so it was nice and immersive.

After the show was over, I headed back out to the main museum area to finish checking out the final handful of exhibits and items on display before heading out.

Outside the museum, there were a final few items on display that were more weather-resistant and a bit too big to reasonably keep inside in the indoor museum space.

I thought this was a pleasant museum well worth and exceeding the value of the admission ticket, and I’m glad I stumbled across this area and decided to check it out. I especially liked learning about the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics due to how unique it was as a consequence of taking place in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic—first enduring a postponement, and then later needing to conduct the events without spectators, both first-in-history occurrences.

It would’ve been neat to pair this with a tour of the stadium as well, but considering the misalignment of availability, just being able to see the museum was plentifully satisfactory.

Throughout a majority of my stay in Japan, I maintained the general sleep schedule that I have in the United States. I tend to sleep pretty late back at home already anyway, so it wasn’t too bad—I would fall asleep during the evening in Tokyo, then be awake by about 5 AM JST. On one of the days, after relaxing in my hotel room, getting a bit of work done, and taking a shower, I was out by 9 AM JST just in time for doors to open at 浜離宮恩賜庭園, which is the Hamarikyu Gardens.

At that point, I did not have any cash on me because none of my United States debit cards worked at any Japanese ATMs. Although I use a Chase Sapphire Reserve as my primary credit card, which I’ve blogged about before in terms of the value I get from the card, I have a checking account with a different, non-Chase bank that is far less widely accepted internationally. After my debit card got denied at three different ATMs, I gave up and realized that I would just have to go cashless and just rely on my friends if I ever need cash.

Sightseeing at the Hamarikyu Gardens was one of my solo activities that I did alone, so just in case I would show up not be able to gain entry due to them being cash-only, I did some research online and pre-purchased an admission ticket. Admission was 300円, which is less than US$2.00.

The Gardens were a relatively quick walk from my hotel in Ginza. I entered the grounds via 大手門橋, or the Otemon Bridge, and snapped a photo facing southeast from the bridge.

Upon arriving at the entrance, I found out that they do indeed take credit card and other cashless payment methods, but regardless, I was glad I had pre-purchased a ticket, because that allowed me to just show my QR code to the attendant and get very quick entry without needing to wait in line (though, I had arrived so early that there wasn’t really a line anyway).

After entering, I first explored the northern corner and northwestern edge of the Gardens. The thing I particularly liked about this area was how the tall buildings served as a backdrop to the trees. Tokyo is a very busy and bustling city, and having a visual representation of the contrast between the densely-packed city and the serene oasis of nature was nice to see.

I made it over to 中の御門橋, or the Nakanogomon Bridge, but noticed that it appeared to be an exit, so I retraced my steps and walked back inside. Eventually, I made it to 内堀, which was the inner moat of the Gardens.

Over in this area was 濱見世, which looked like a snack and souvenir shop.

Across from that was a rest area.

I noticed that a lot of Japanese tourist attractions have rest areas. I don’t see them often in the United States, and I was able to devise two potential reasons for it—the first being that tourist activities in the United States usually aren’t as large and thorough as the ones in Japan, so there isn’t really a need for people to rest part-way through; and the second being that it’s generally considered undesirable in the United States for people to just loiter around without having much purpose in their activity.

I appreciated that Japan had rest areas in a majority of places I visited. Because Japan’s tourist hotspots have so much to take in and explore, especially if you’re patient and diligent about seeing everything, it’s nice to know that you can walk around and sightsee for a couple hours, retreat to the rest area to eat a snack and sit for a while, and then finish sightseeing without feeling too exhausted by the end. As for the matter of loitering, because Japan’s culture puts such emphasis on being considerate to others, it seems like people pointlessly loitering isn’t ever really much of a problem.

I wasn’t ready to take a break yet though, so I resumed southbound. I came across this structure called 鷹の御茶屋, which is read as Taka-no Ochaya and translates to Hawk Tea House.

I also saw this building called 松の御茶屋, which is read as Matsu-no Ochaya and translates to Pine Tea House.

This is a photograph I took while standing on 三間橋, or the Mitsuma Bridge, facing southward.

From here, I took the path circling 潮入の池, which is the Tidal Pond. There was some construction on one of the northern bridges, but there were a lot of other pathways and bridges through and around the pond, so I captured a lot of photographs from a lot of different perspectives and vantage points.

The building in the center here (below the Hilton Conrad Tokyo) is 中島の御茶屋, or the Nakajima Tea House. It was still pretty early in the morning, but the tea house was already filling up pretty quickly with customers.

By this point, I had made it to the southern side of the Gardens.

On the map, I saw that there was a paved path that went along right up to the edge of the water, so I decided to walk all the way south to check it out. The start of the path had a view of 汐留川水門, or the Shiodome River Water Gate.

As expected from a path that goes along a waterway’s edge, the elevation there was lower than the elevation of the rest of the garden. This made for some fun new perspectives when photographing trees growing at the top of a hill.

This is 横堀水門, or the Yokobori Water Gate.

This is 樋の口山, or the Hinokuchi-yama Hill. There was a sign labeling it so I assume it has some kind of importance, but there was no other plaque or other information posted about it, so I wasn’t able to find out why the hill was labeled and partitioned off.

This is 灯台跡, or the Lighthouse Ruins. Apart from the sign labeling it as the site of a former lighthouse, the only other information around it was a sign asking people not to sit on the grass and to use the designated open spaces elsewhere in the Gardens instead. However, I feel like this one is a bit more self-explanatory; I imagine there used to be a lighthouse here to help watercraft navigate the nearby Sumida River.

After walking the full path alongside the southeastern edge of the Gardens, I continued northwestbound and saw the Hamarikyu Ferry Terminal. It was not in service on the day of my visit, and there was some signage that implied that it might be closed for the season, but there was still enough equipment around the area that made me suspect that it was still capable of conducting standard operations if needed.

Before continuing on my way, I stopped at the toilets. This is probably the most one I have been with nature while urinating in a public bathroom.

After concluding the volumetric reduction of my bladder, I continued deeper into the foresty area and came across this device near what was labeled on the map as 庚申堂鴨場, or the Koshin-do Duck Hunting Site.

The device was labeled as 內盤水門盤, which roughly translates to “inner water gate plate,” so I am guessing that this might have had more to do with the moat I saw earlier, rather than the duck hunting field.

Also in this general vicinity was 旧稲生神社, which reads as the Kyu-ino Jinja and translates to the Former Inari Shinto Shrine.

Upon emerging from the denser foresty area, I saw a flower field. My trip was during November so the flowers weren’t quite fully in bloom, but I imagine that this entire area becomes very colorful during the spring and summer.

After taking multiple paths through and around the flower fields, I continued northwest and back to where I had entered.

I had missed this earlier when I came in, but the 三百年の松, or the 300-Year-Old Pine, was fenced off and to the side of the main pathway.

This is what the Otemon entrance to the Gardens looks like. In case you’re curious, the text on the orange banner above the name of the Gardens says 特別史跡 and 特別名勝, which roughly translates to describing the Gardens as a special historic site of scenic beauty.

The Hamarikyu Gardens were very pleasant and served as a great way to spend a few hours sightseeing. Similar to Yoyogi Park, which I blogged about a handful of days ago, I especially like that Tokyo has these big public parks, gardens, and other pockets of nature integrated nicely into surrounding blocks of concrete, steel, and glass buildings.

The admission fee for the Gardens being less than US$2.00 is insane to me, as something like this in the United States would likely be about US$25.00 in populated cities and probably never be less than around US$15.00 even in the most suburban and rural areas. I thought this was amazing value for money and overall a great use of my time.

I briefly mentioned this yesterday during my miscellaneous photo dump blog post in the section about visiting the Yamaha shop in Ginza, but I am very much a music person. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve played a lot of different instruments. I started with piano lessons when I was young (very fitting to the Asian stereotype), took cello lessons alongside piano when I got a little bit older, and then played woodwind and percussion instruments in band when I was in middle school.

Since then, I also started playing more string instruments, guitar being the primary one. As of today, I have accrued a bit of a collection of both electric and acoustic guitars—a custom Mod Shop Fender Stratocaster, a Fender Paramount PD-220E, a Gretsch Electromatic Classic Hollow Body, an Ovation Celebrity Elite Plus, a Charvel Pro-Mod Series So-Cal, a Jackson Pro Series King V, and a Jackson Pro Plus Series Soloist SLA3. I also have a Yamaha TRBX304 bass and an Epiphone Hummingbird tenor ukulele.

With all that in mind, it is probably unsurprising that I decided to stop by the Min-on Music Museum in Shinjuku City of the Tokyo Metropolis during my trip to Japan. Music museums don’t seem to be too common in North America—the only ones I had been to before that I recall are the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California, USA and Studio Bell: Home of the National Music Centre in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Thus, when I found out that Tokyo had a highly-rated music museum, I added that on my list of things to check out while I was visiting.

The Min-on Music Museum was basically a combination of a small museum with a live performing arts exhibition. When I showed up, I was told that admission was free and that there was a piano performance in progress in one of the rooms. I was scurried up to the piano room on the second floor, and after waiting for the second-to-last song to end, I was allowed in so I could watch the final song of the performance. At this point, I felt very fortunate that I had made it just in time to at least see one song.

The performer was skilled at playing the piano, but she seemed like she was just a regular staff member at the museum—she was wearing what looked like a uniform that all other staff members were wearing. I found her piano ability quite impressive within the context that usually, in the United States, regular employees like this generally aren’t held to a high qualification standard if you’re just staffing a museum.

There was signage that asked spectators not to take photographs until the conclusion of the set. My guess is that this policy was implemented due to the industry self-regulation in Japan of cell phone manufacturers forcing a shutter sound to play when taking photographs with Japanese-made phones in order to combat non-consensual or privacy-intruding photography, and such shutter sounds would interfere with the performance. Even though I have a United States phone with no shutter sound, I still avoided taking pictures until after the show, upon which I checked out all the different pianos on the stage.

After taking a look at the pianos, I headed over to one of the museum exhibits where they showcased various different instruments from around the world.

Shortly after I finished going through this section of the museum, a staff member came up to me and asked me to head down to the first floor to watch the music box performance. This is when I realized that they have routine recurring mini-concerts happening throughout the day at this museum on one-hour intervals. Once an hour, there is a piano performance that takes about 15-20 minutes, followed by a small 10-15 minute break to allow patrons to explore the museum. Afterwards, there is a music box performance that takes another 15-20 minutes, followed by another 10-15 minute break for more self-guided exploration. This cycle repeats several times per day.

The music box performance had similar guidelines of no photography during the performance. Although the performer was providing commentary on the music boxes in Japanese, I was provided a brochure with an English translation so I could learn about the different boxes being played and on display.

I forgot to take a wider shot of the piano performance area, but I remembered to do so for the music box area. As you can see, there are a lot of swiveling stools arranged in a grid, which allows for spectators to spin around and watch the performer play the various different music boxes available in the room.

After enjoying this performance, I had a short opportunity to check out some more of the artifacts on display before it was time for the piano performance again.

Because I only had a chance to hear the final song of the prior performance, I joined in on the piano set again so I could listen to the entire thing. It was a different employee playing the pianos this time, which further added to me being impressed at the baseline level of talent of all the museum staff. She played a variety of different songs that were curated to fit the time period of the piano on which the song was played.

After thoroughly enjoying the live performances, I checked out the final few rooms before wrapping up my museum visit. A bunch of sections in these exhibits had signs prohibiting photography, so I was only able to capture pictures of just a few items in this final area.

This is a view of the museum from the second floor looking down. The center was fairly wide open, with all the notable rooms—such as the performance halls, museum exhibitions, and meeting spaces—being lined along the edges.

Next door to the museum was the Min-on Music Library. I saw from the website that reservations are required to access the library, and it seemed like the library was more geared towards academics who were going there to conduct research and study (as opposed to being geared towards casual visitors or tourists), so I chose not to go in as to be considerate to those actually using the library for its intended purpose.

I was in this museum for around an hour and a half, and right as I was done and heading out, there was a bus full of people that had just arrived at the front entrance and were filing indoors, all wearing professional business attire and some carrying briefcases. My guess is that they had some sort of special event or conference going on, and I was lucky enough to just barely dodge the congestion.

I’m glad I stumbled across the Min-on Music Museum online so I knew that it existed, and I feel fortunate that I had a chance to visit it. It was one of the more serene and blissful tourist activities I did while I was in Tokyo, and I think it was a very unique experience that I otherwise would not have been able to have in the United States. Yes, I can buy tickets to scheduled orchestral performances in the United States, but that’s not quite the same as being able to go to a free museum and unexpectedly have live piano and music box performances throughout the day.

One of the things that I found incredibly convenient during my trip to Tokyo was how easy the public transportation system was to use. Apart from one singular instance when my friend called a taxi and I just joined her, I exclusively took public transportation throughout the entire two weeks I was in Japan.

There are a lot of train stations and a lot of different train lines that have great coverage of the entire Tokyo Metropolis. However, obviously, not every train line goes to every station. Even though Ginza, the neighborhood I was staying in, has access to many train stations nearby, it doesn’t always have direct, non-transfer service to every single small station. Now, taking transfers isn’t that huge of a deal—the train stations are usually intuitive and easy enough to navigate that you can easily make transfers. With that being said, sometimes, if you just walk a kilometer or so (or less), you can make it to a different train station that does have direct service to Ginza.

On one of the days when I was out being a tourist, I faced this exact same scenario where I could take a ride from the closest train station, transfer part-way to Ginza, then take a different line to my destination… or, I could walk a bit and take a direct line instead. Because of how nice it is to just walk around and sightsee in Tokyo, I opted to walk to a different, further-away train station instead.

On my way there, I noticed an area where people were going through a security checkpoint. I figured that whatever was on the other side was important enough that it needed security, so I spontaneously decided to stand in line. After a short wait, I made it to some metal detectors, so I emptied my pockets and walked through. After passing the checkpoint and emerging into a little opening, I was guided to a ticket booth to purchase admission to the premises.

This is when I finally found out that the place I entered through was 迎賓館赤坂離宮 西門, which translates to the West Gate of the State Guest House, Akasaka Palace. Unfortunately, I arrived too close to closing and didn’t have enough time to go inside the building, but I was welcomed in to explore the outdoor garden area instead.

After I continued walking south alongside the western facade of the building, I saw the 迎賓館 主庭, which is the Main Garden of the State Guest House.

The main garden area allowed me to face northwards and capture a photograph of the south entrance to the state house.

The main garden was a very popular spot for people to congregate, which made sense due to the nice fountain that was situated in the center.

The fountain had statues of griffins and turtles surrounding the basin. The griffins were carrying a shield, which I imagine implies that they are defenders and protectors of the palace. As for the turtles, I am guessing they are supposed to symbolize longevity, wisdom, and stability.

It’s possible that they were apposed beside each other to visualize balance, as griffins are more active in their strategy compared to turtles. Or, due to the history and purpose of Akasaka Palace as it pertains to its usage in welcoming important guests as a diplomatic center, the griffin represents the West while the turtle represents the East. … Alternatively, I might just be overthinking all of it and there isn’t that deep of a meaning to it.

After capturing plenty of photos of the fountain, I continued walking eastbound and snapped one final picture of the southern facade of the building from an eastern vantage point.

I saw on the map that there was another building to the east—迎賓館赤坂離宮 和風別館「游心亭」, which is the “Yushintei” Japanese-style annex of the State Guest House, Akasaka Palace. I wanted to take a look at that as well, but the path to reach it was blocked off and the signage near the annex implied that a special tour reservation was required for entry.

So instead, I took a photograph of the flower bed nearby, then retraced my steps back to the west towards where I originally came in.

At the fork in the path, instead of going south, I continued east into the front yard. From here, I was able to get some nice photos of the northern side of the guest house.

There were some statues of birds atop some of the structural pillars of the guest house. They look similar to eagles, but they seem to be wearing little hats, so maybe my speculation isn’t entirely correct.

A lot of people were taking photographs near the front north entrance to the state house; after the group cleared up a bit, I walked up so I could get a close-up shot of the decorations adorning the gate.

The building had a section to its northwest and northeast that jutted out a bit; the doors in these sections had a white and gold canopy overhead that resembled the design of the gate.

There was another nice flower bed near the aforementioned door and steel awning.

I noticed that there was a closed gate on the eastern side of the front yard, which I imagine is there to allow guests in from the East Gate, the opposite counterpart to the West Gate through which I had entered the property.

Here is another shot of the guest house’s north facade from a northeastern vantage point, with the setting sun peeking through above.

In this “courtyard” area (if you consider fences to be sufficient surroundings to define the boundaries of a courtyard), I saw on the map that there was a restaurant called パークカフ, or the Park Café. It seemed to take up the entire northern half of the stone-paved section of the front yard.

Food in Japan was so good that I had been taking basically every single chance possible to try different snacks and meals whenever the opportunity arose. However, I had just finished eating at this time, so I opted to pass on dining at the Park Café and just took a photograph of the umbrella tables instead, which were a nice shade of dark red.

On the opposite side of the café was another nice gate, this one being gold and light blue.

This is a photo I took at the threshold of the aforementioned gold and blue gate, facing north in the direction of 若葉東公園, or Wakaba East Park.

Continuing north, I saw another fountain and building to my east. It wasn’t labeled on the map, so I wasn’t able to figure out what it was, but considering that there was a guard patrolling the area, I deduced that it wasn’t open to the public.

After making it all the way north, I turned around and took one final shot of the state house.

This is the gate protecting the northern entrance to the grounds, just north of 記念品販売所, which basically translates to the palace’s souvenir store.

I wanted to be diligent and make sure I saw everything I was allowed to see, so upon noticing that a side pathway near the souvenir store wasn’t blocked off, I doubled back about 50 meters. I saw the western equivalent of the fountain and building I saw from the east; this one didn’t have a patrolling guard, but it did have stanchions at the intersection of the footpath, so I didn’t take my chances to get closer.

As I was wrapping up my visit to Akasaka Palace, a plane flew overhead and left behind a condensation trail, so I seized the opportunity to juxtapose this street lantern in front of it and snap a photo.

And finally, this is the northern gate of the front yard, which was being used as an exit only, presumably due to the security checkpoints and ticket stations only being set up at the West Gate.

Admission to see all this was only 300円 for an adult ticket, which, as of today, is less than US$2.00. I’m very glad I randomly stumbled upon this during my walk to the train station; even though I didn’t get to tour inside the State Guest House, I think the sightseeing outside Akasaka Palace was still well worth it.

Yesterday, I wrapped up a trip to Japan and returned to the United States. In case you missed it, the blog post in which I review my flight and travel experience also has a lot of relevant context surrounding my trip. I’m in the process of going through my photographs now and catching up on blog posts.

One of the first tourist activities I did in Tokyo was visiting 代々木公園, or Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is a very large public park in Shibuya in the Yoyogikamizonochō district, or 代々木神園町. This is the same district housing 明治神宮, or Meiji Jingū, a Shinto shrine.

I went together with some of my friends who are more familiar with Japan, and throughout my visit to the park, I mostly just followed them around and allowed them to lead the way. Unfortunately, after browsing some online resources while putting together this blog post and editing photographs, I realized that the park was quite a bit larger than I thought, and there was a decent amount of stuff that I seem to have missed out on. I definitely could’ve taken more agency to be more diligent in exploration, but because I was still a very new arrival to Japan at that time, I was a bit overwhelmed and wasn’t as meticulous as I could have been.

With that being said, I still enjoyed my time seeing Yoyogi Park and Meiji Jingū. Having grown up in the Chicagoland suburbs and now living in Las Vegas, it’s not common for me to see what is functionally a gigantic manicured forest in the middle of a dense city. I think that made it feel even more special—the park was important enough that they took space in an area that demonstrated how scarce the land was, and still built a very serene and soothing piece of nature on it.

After taking the Chiyoda Line from my hotel in Ginza to Harajuku Station, I met up with my friends and we entered the park through one of the side entrances.

This area had what appeared to be a series of special installments. They had flower arrangements…

… miniature dioramas…

… and bonsai trees.

After walking down a long path with these exhibitions, we made it closer to the temple.

There was a nice flower arrangement at the entrance of the temple.

Close to the temple, there was what I believe was the roundest tree I’ve ever seen, if you consider it as a ratio of its size.

It made me wonder whether this tree is somehow just naturally this perfectly spherical, or if it is pruned and maintained to be as such. I think it’s fairly impressive either way—it’s both amazing if a tree manages to grow in such a pristine shape, and it’s just as amazing if there are groundskeepers who put in the effort to climb to such elevations to trim the branches and leaves.

Unfortunately, the interior area of the temple had signs asking people not to take pictures, so the best I could do was to capture this from a distance in a way that didn’t show the photo-free area.

I also did a round around the stone-paved area to grab photographs of the surrounding buildings.

I couldn’t quite confirm for sure, but this appeared like an area where people could write messages and leave them hanging in the designated areas to dedicate them to the shrine.

While walking around this area (and the park in general), I noticed that the birds were particularly vocal. It was quite amusing, and it sounded like the birds were making squawking and shrieking noises rather than more subtle chirping and cheeping sounds that I’m used to hearing from American avians.

After exploring the temple, we exited through one of the gates and found this hand-washing station. There wasn’t one by the gate through which we had originally entered, but according to the signage near this one, I believe the idea is that you are supposed to cleanse yourself using this provided water prior to entering the temple.

After a bit more walking, we made it to the southern side of Yoyogi Park.

A lot of this area was basically a forest with very tall trees. It reminded me of some of the forests I hiked through in Washington, Idaho, and Montana, except these trees in Yoyogi Park felt more surreal after remembering that literally only a few hundred meters away, there were mid- and high-rise buildings densely packed together.

After finishing a very peaceful and calming walk, we made it to what I believe was intended to be the main entrance, and the path through which most tourists would start their visit to Yoyogi Park.

We started navigating our way away from the park and towards a restaurant to get some dinner, and in the process, I got a chance to ascend some stairs to a pedestrian skybridge, which allowed me to get an elevated view of the city around the park and snap some nice photos.

As you were probably able to tell, I very much enjoyed my time in Yoyogikamizonochō. The best part was that this isn’t even the only park of its type in the Tokyo Metropolis—there are a lot of “oasis in the middle of a bustling city” kind of spots spread throughout the various cities in Tokyo (and I ended up visiting a few more of them, as you will see in future blog posts).