Land of the Rising Sun

Well, Tokyo is amazing. This place kinda makes Seoul look like White Plains compared to NYC. Tokyo has taller buildings, a whole lot more pedestrian traffic, more crowded trains, and a whole lot less english. That last part is kinda fucking rough, but whatever. I can still order by pointing and hunting around some tourist neighborhoods.

It's always nice to know what people are talking about, especially when it comes to history. My Japanese history course prepared me for this trip more than I could have imagined. Holy shit, looking at places, recognizing names, it's a pretty good feeling, especially around museums and historical artifacts. Please forgive me if I say stuff that means nothing to you, or look some stuff up step into the mind of a huge history nerd. The choice is yours.

My first stop was the old Imperial Palace, about 10 minutes from my hotel. I kinda knew it when I saw it.

Moats aren't really typical city scenery

So yeah, I found the palace no problem. Man were the grounds pretty also, the walls were enormous. Very different from the Korean palace. This was more of a fortress, one with several gatehouses, choke points and moats for efficient invader killing. From an architectural standpoint, it was absolutely breathtaking. 

Old meets new

Guardhouse that held 100 samurai representatives from every clan

After examining the walls and walking down the main road for a while, I took the side path to the Imperial gardens.

84 different kinds of water irises

Imperial Carp

Again, stunning. The garden was laid out so beautifully with the woodwork on the streams and the stone bridges over them. The maintenance required to keep something like this together is astounding, and it must have been almost unimaginable without technology to maintain it. It's good to be the king. Or emperor, it doesn't really matter, this is a pretty great house. 

The next part that stuck out was the Imperial bamboo garden, featuring bamboo from Japan and parts of China. What made it stick out was that this was Hirohito's bamboo garden. 

It was created after the war, but still, that's a pretty significant historical figure's bamboo garden. This is when it really hit me that "Oh yeah, we were at war with this country 70 years ago."

Then there were some more gardens, one had a pine tree which was a gift from the king and queen of Spain, and two gardens full of fruit-bearing trees. Interesting to see native Japanese fruit trees even though the fruit wasn't ripe or wasn't growing at all.

All in all, it was an amazing first site to visit here in Japan. The history  behind the imperial bloodline, the history of Japan, and just how old a lot of shit on earth really is gets me pumped. You only have time to see so little, yet I'm really thankful to get even a peek at what came before.