I usually get my work done during the evening and night, but sometimes, there are some unavoidable midday meetings I have to attend that overlap with when I usually go out to be a tourist. When that happens, I still try to squeeze in a quick activity afterwards, which was the case for when I went to the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix on a work day shortly before sunset.

As you can probably guess from the name, the Japanese Friendship Garden is a curated outdoor garden themed around elements traditional to Japanese culture. It’s located on the northern side of downtown Phoenix—situated north of the Portland Parkway Park, just south of Margaret T. Hance Park, and above Interstate 10.

I’ve been to a lot of amazing botanical gardens before, so I don’t know if my perception is a bit skewed at this point because of that, but I thought the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix was a bit underwhelming. It was definitely a nice garden, but it felt small, and it had some areas that appeared to not be fully maintained and manicured. I think a notable element of this Garden is the fact that it is basically an oasis in the middle of Phoenix, a city surrounded by the Sonoran Desert, and because it serves as a reprieve from the otherwise bustling downtown area.

Here are some photographs I captured:

There was a building in the eastern rear section of the Garden that was gated off. My guess is that the tea tours take place in that building, but that is a separate scheduled event, so I was only able to take a look at the exterior.

The building containing the bathrooms was also themed accordingly, both in architecture as well as the decorations adorning and surrounding it.

Near the gift shop, there was a small collection of bonsai trees.

This is the entrance to the Garden. It is gated off in the photograph because I was there right up until closing time.

After you purchase admission, the staff gives you a bright neon sticker to wear on your shirt to indicate that you are a paid visitor. I deposited mine into the trash can on my way out of the building, but apparently some people decided to use theirs to decorate the bike rack in the parking lot instead.

The Garden had some interesting rules. There is a wide open grassy field near the pond, but apparently the grass is off limits; I was sitting on the grass while I was responding to some time-sensitive messages on my phone so that I would be out of the way of the pedestrian footpath, but a staff member promptly approached me saying that I was not permitted to be on the grass. There were also some stepping stones installed alongside a concrete path that I used to get a better angle for some photographs, but I was once again approached by a staff member to be informed that I was not allowed to step on the stepping stones.

Otherwise, checking out the Garden was a nice way to go for a walk and get some fresh air. My general admission ticket was US$14.00, and I spent about an hour and a half there (though if you only want to do one loop around the path, you could potentially be able to see everything in about half an hour).

After exploring the three different buildings composing the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, I walked across the street to the Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza, a park dedicated to housing various monuments and memorials honoring heroes, wars, and other events of historical significance.

Here are some photographs I snapped throughout the Plaza:

For my next tourist activity in Phoenix, I visited the Arizona State Capitol in the Government Mall neighborhood west of downtown. The Capitol consists of three different buildings—the Capitol Museum (which connects to the Executive Tower), the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

I started in the central Capitol Museum and wove in and out of the many rooms containing many museum exhibits.

The center of the museum had a dome on top, from the structural supports of which there was a chandelier hanging by a long, metallic, wound rod.

After going through the first building, I went to the southern building, home of the Senate.

As you’d expect, my third and final building tour was the northern one, home of the House of Representatives.

Security was tighter in this building for some reason, so I was escorted around by a security guard. I had a nice conversation with him; he is a fan of the Las Vegas Raiders and is looking forward to the new baseball stadium for the Athletics.

Here are some more photos of the museum exhibits taken in the central building.

This is the first Capitol I’ve seen with this large and robust of a museum on-site. I remember the Idaho State Capitol having a small set of displays on the lowest floor, but the Arizona State Capitol has a literal full-blown, multi-floor museum.

I think education should be affordable, accessible, and abundant. Although I support having a small government, I still believe government has an important place in society, and one of the roles I think it should have is to help provide opportunities to its people. Being educated is a great way to expand the scope of someone’s opportunities, so it was very nice seeing Arizona putting some of its funding towards educating the public about history and politics.

For my next adventure, I made my way over to Arizona. I’ve been to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon before, but I went straight northwest afterwards and didn’t get a chance to visit the southern cities, so I decided to take another trip to Arizona to explore the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

Today’s adventure was in Scottsdale. I had a bit of a late start to my day, so in the very late afternoon, I hopped in a Waymo self-driving, autonomous vehicle and took a ride to Old Town.

Unfortunately, right as I arrived, it started raining. I considered taking shelter for a bit, but eventually decided I wouldn’t let some suboptimal weather put a stop to my tourism, so I went back out into the precipitation and walked around the Scottsdale Waterfront.

I made my way over to the Soleri Bridge and crossed over the Arizona Canal, continuing south deeper into Old Town.

I continued southbound on Drinkwater Boulevard to check out the Scottsdale Civic Center. By this point, the sun had already set and it was getting pretty dark.

After continuing west on Civic Center Park Path, I popped right out on Brown Avenue in front of Main Street. I still had a bit of time left before my dinner appointment, so I did a few loops around to explore the shops alongside Main Street, 1st Avenue, and Scottsdale Road, and Marshall Way.

When it came time for dinner, I met up with a couple friends at the Frybread Lounge on Main Street. We picked this location because this is apparently the only Native-owned restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale and I was interested in trying Indigenous cuisine.

As our appetizer, we started with their Frybread Flight, three miniature frybread with side dipping sauces of powdered sugar, honey, Ramona Farms O’odham tepary bean hummus, and Lakota wojapi berry sauce.

This was my first time ever trying frybread. When it came out and I saw it for the first time, I wondered if I would dislike it because it basically looked like regular flatbread that was deep fried (and I usually am not the biggest fan of fried foods), but it ended up being pretty good. It wasn’t excessively oily or greasy; the fried flavor was strong enough that it was distinctly different than flatbread, but not so fried that it was heavy.

For my entrée, upon recommendation by our waitress, I ordered a bison burger containing two quarter-pound bison patties topped with chipotle aioli, romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced red onion, and a slice of cheddar cheese, all nestled inside frybread.

The best way for me to describe this is that it was pretty much normal burger, but inside frybread. The frybread gave it a very unique texture that added an interesting and distinct identity to the dish, and that flavor profile is something that I had not tried before. However, ultimately, it was basically just a regular bison burger with the bun swapped out for thick, fried flatbread.

For my beverage (not pictured) to go along with my burger, I ordered a cup of coffee that was roasted on the Salt River Maricopa Indian Community Nation. I’m not at all a coffee enthusiast and I don’t have a well-refined palate when it comes to identifying different kinds of coffee, so I couldn’t really tell a difference between this coffee and mass-produced American coffee, but with a little bit of half-and-half and sweetener, it made for a nice drink to accompany my meal.

And with that, that is one tourist activity down out of many more to come during my several-day stay in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.