Today we were off to Inokashira Park. We arrived at the train station before the rush hour.
I took a few shots from just outside the Musashino Station while I was waiting for my wife to get Google Maps up and running so we could find the park.
What can I say. My wife likes cats.
When we arrived at the park we walked across this bridge. We didn’t get very far before we became entranced by the antics of the ducks in the pond. It also helped that there were some nice reflection shots in the water.
The view down the pond from the bridge.
After watching the birds we continued our journey around the pond. I particularly like to photograph fall landpools (reflections) and there were a lot of them in the pond.
We continued to see wildlife as we walked around the pond.
Mid morning we passed the Blue Sky Cafe. As soon and my wife found out that they had donuts shaped like cats we had to stop.
There were quite a few people out in boats enjoying the beautiful fall day. On a weekend it is probably packed.
As we were nearing the end of our visit we noticed, what appeared to be, a class trip visiting the park and the kids seemed to be having fun. There were also adults out exercising.
We spent some time visiting the Inokashira Benzaiten a small Buddhist Temple in the park.
A few last shots of the pond before we headed back to the train station.
Just outside the park there was a small shopping street which attracted Linda.
One last shot from outside the train station.
We caught the subway over to Yushima Tenmangu Shrine.
The Shrine was not very big.
There was a small Japanese garden associated with the shrine. A family had dressed their little girl up in a traditional costume so I took a photo of her.
What we really came to see was the Chrysanthemum Exhibit that was taking place at the Shrine. It was Chrysanthemum season and there were exhibits all over Tokyo. This was by far the best exhibit we found.
After finishing at the Shrine we noticed there was a large park area not too far away. It was called Ueno Onshi Park and is noted for its lotus plants in Shinobazu Pond. In the fall the lotus plant were not all that impressive. It was getting late so we only manged to walk around a small portion of the park. It is a park that includes zoos and museums so it requires more than a an hours time to really experience it.
One of my hobbies is photographing wildlife and there was plenty of wildlife to photograph in the Pond.
As we were leaving the park we noticed this young man dressed in his school uniform walking along the street. In Japan young kids are trained at an early age to navigate the Tokyo train system and you can frequently see them walking alone on the streets and in the stations.
It was getting late so we started looking for a place to eat and the train station to take us back to our hotel.
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