what do you see?

Yesterday we went to 2 Japanese gardens in Tokyo - both cost 300 yen to get in but were very very worth it...first one was the oldest in Tokyo - laid out in the 17th century, but decreased in size since then. It's only 14 acres, but so well landscaped that it seems huge. It has a couple of old bridges (the very steep curved type, one stone and one bright red wood), small hills, woods, rivers, ponds full of koi and so on. A very peaceful place to go, with only the nearby offices and hotels looming over it, and the vast white bulbous roof of the Tokyo Dome (next-door!) reminding you of where you really are.



The second one is over 60 acres in size, right next to the water. This has a very large salt-water lake with a tea-house in the centre, bridges, duck-hunting grounds (not in use anymore!), fields of wild flowers etc. etc. There are parts where you can sit under the exquisitely maintained pine trees and look out on the factories and offices that surround the Bay, with jumbo jets flying over the Rainbow Bridge in the distance...amazing.



After we left, we stopped off at the most scarey supermarket ever (yellow ceilings, mirrors everywhere, a maze of aisles, underneath a huge expressway) where we bought our first muesli and breakfast cereal (a lot more exciting for us than it probably sounds to those of you living in the West!!) and then walked up to Ginza and stumbled on TGI Fridays in a back street - it happened to be happy hour so of course we had to have a couple of cocktails at the bar and some food...