Imperial Palace Garden and the Yasukuni Shrine

Kon'nichiwa from me with more belated blogs. Just a short one here – two little visits, each with not much to say about them. A few weeks ago we went to Higashi Gyoen – the East garden of the Imperial Palace. From the Otemachi subway station we went through the Ote-mon gate into the garden – entrance free. Parks and gardens in Japan are, on the whole, nothing to write home about. From my experience so far, at least. One of the first parks we went to, much to my disappointment, didn’t have any benches at all. This one, however, was fairly nice – there was green space where people were sitting and having picnics, surrounded by flowers in bloom. The mosaic-clad Imperial Music Hall was probably the prettiest thing we saw there. But apart from that… not much. So yeah, nothing too impressive but it was relaxing to sit in the sunshine for a bit and enjoy the relative quiet in the middle of the city.

On leaving the garden, we went to the nearby Yasukuni Shrine. The road leading up to the majestic archway was a long, straight line that was flanked with car-boot stalls. I believe this is something that happens every Saturday – people come to flog their bits and bobs along this road. It was funny to see all these people, some of whom were just selling bits of old junk, on this impressive walkway to the temple. The torri (shrine archway) is of a vibrant red steel, and said to be the tallest in Japan. The shrine was founded in 1869 to worship the supporters of the emperor who were killed prior to the Meiji Restoration. These days the Yasukini-jinja includes the worship of all who died in the wars that followed. It’s said that the parting words of the kamikaze pilots were “see you at Yasukini.”

The shrine was pretty, and despite having eight million Japanese visitors a year, it wasn’t too busy when we visited. Around the back of the Yushukan (military museum) that stands next to the shrine was a lovely little garden, as well as a display of kiku flowers. It was a pleasant little outing, though I now look back on the shrine in a less impressive light in the knowledge that it was also visited by the ‘oh-so-talented’ Justin Bieber, which caused much controversy at the time.

So that was our day trip in the Imperial Palace area. It being a long weekend we’ve just had a little weekend trip out of the city, plenty more to write about, so hopefully I’ll be catching up on my blogs tomorrow! Until then, sayonara.