Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens and More – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

One good garden deserves another. This morning, it was the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. This afternoon, I visited the Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens.

After the gardens, I saw some other stuff. But I’m going to hold off on talking about that until after I’ve finished discussing the Imperial Palace Gardens. If you’re unhappy about that, take it up with management. However, I must warn you that management works weird hours. So, they might be difficult to get a hold of, but keep trying. Your satisfaction is always at the top of their feeble, deranged minds.

Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens

If you read my post from last Friday afternoon, you know of my failure when I tried to visit the Imperial Palace Gardens only to find out that they close Mondays and, grrrr, Fridays. The fact that I didn’t know that before I showed up was purely my fault. That information was readily available in my walking tour app and guidebooks, and on the official webpage for the Imperial Palace Gardens. But I hadn’t checked because I’d never encountered a tourist attraction that closed Fridays. And I’ve encountered one heck of a lot of tourist attractions in my travels.

Today is Sunday. As I explained in this morning’s post about Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, this is the last non-Monday that I’ll have in Tokyo. I’ll be back in a little over three weeks on a Monday. I won’t have enough time before I have to catch my flight the next day to visit either of the gardens, so because I hadn’t been to either yet this trip, it was either today or never for both Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden and the Imperial Palace Gardens. I chose today rather than never.

There are a few gates into the Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens. Entering the one I did, I passed by some large, overbearing, almost threatening stone walls to get into the compound.

By that entrance, there’s one of the only three surviving original guardhouses. The other two are slightly farther along on the way into the gardens.

There were some trees in this area, many of which were topiary.

Inside the Imperial Palace Gardens compound, the grounds are quite lovely, with lots of trees, lawns, flowers, and a pond. There’s also a small orchard. Some persimmon trees with bright orange fruit that looked full and ready to eat. Then again, I’m not terribly familiar with persimmons, so I’m not a good judge of these things.

Some other trees had some particularly large citrus fruit. They were green, with a bit of yellow, so I don’t know if they were quite ripe yet. However, it didn’t look like a variety I’m familiar with, so maybe so; maybe not. The sign beside the tree said they were “Citrus maxima; ‘Egami-buntan’.”

As I was getting ready to type this up, I asked Google about that fruit. An AI Overview provided by Google, for whatever that’s worth, tells me that, “‘Egami-buntan’ is a cultivar of Citrus maxima, the pomelo, known for its large, oblate shape and moderately thick, smooth rind. It has a juicy, flavorful, and moderately firm flesh that is often deep pink or red, although its rind may appear faint or lacking.”

Okay. I know pomelos. I don’t think the ones at the Imperial Palace Gardens were ready for picking today. My mental image of pomelos, and the pictures I found on Google for “Citrus maxima; ‘Egami-buntan’,” show the fruit as mostly yellow. So, probably not. Whatever. I’d never pick fruit in any Imperial Palace Gardens without permission. At least, not when anyone is looking.

The signage in the orchard said there were also apples, plums, and pears, but those trees were bare of fruit. So, I guess November 2 (today here) is past their time in Tokyo.

There is a small bamboo grove in the Imperial Palace Gardens with a few different varieties of bamboo. On mentioning bamboo, pedants might feel a strong urge to jump in here to tell me that, “You know, bamboo, despite their thick trunks, are actually grass.”

Don’t bother. I already knew that. I don’t remember how many years ago it was that I learned that, but I knew. Besides, I have a petition to change that. I propose that it should not be classified as grass unless you can trim it with a standard household lawnmower. Which is not to say that, under my definition, everything that can be cut down by a lawnmower is grass. For example, you could probably shear pansies with a mower, but that doesn’t make them grass. I’m just proposing that to be grass, you have to be able to mow it, not that it has to be grass if you can mow it.

If you’re with me on that, please sign my petition.

Wait. What was I talking about before I so rudely interrupted myself to go off on a tangent about bamboo? Oh, yes. The Tokyo Imperial Palace Gardens.

The grounds of the gardens also contain a traditional Japanese garden with a tea ceremony room, along with a few other structures.

Up on a hill off to one side of the garden, there’s an old wooden, unassuming defence house. Inside, there’s some text about its use back in the days. Tokyo is, for the most part, quite flat. So the hill might be an artificial fortification. I don’t know. In any case, it’s not very high.

Down at one end of the garden, there’s the base of the old Edo Castle keep. Edo Castle is what was on the site before it became the Imperial Palace. Visitors can, and I did, climb up to the top of it and get a commanding view of the gardens.

Across a courtyard from the Edo Castle keep in the Imperial Palace Gardens, there’s a modern concert hall that’s polygonal in shape. I didn’t count the sides. I could only see the front three, but I think it might be a hexagon, or possibly an octagon. The sides are very tastefully decorated. The concert hall was built in 1966 to celebrate the 60th birthday of Empress Kojun, the current Emperor’s grandmother.

Yasukuni Shrine

I hadn’t intended to go to the Yasukuni Shrine after the Imperial Palace Gardens. In fact, I intended to intentionally avoid the shrine on this trip, as I successfully did the last time I was in Tokyo. The shrine was established in 1869 to honour people who died fighting for Japan. It became controversial because some war criminals are enshrined and honoured there. Emperor Shōwa disapproved of the enshrinement of war criminals there and ceased visiting it after 1975. His heirs haven’t visited either. However, some Japanese Prime Ministers have visited it, which raises some hackles. Hackles are things that you definitely want to keep as low as you possibly can.

Not wanting to be seen honouring war criminals, I didn’t want to go, but …

I was walking to my next destination (see below) when I unexpectedly saw a torii, a traditional Japanese temple gate, looming in front of me. I walked to it and saw a sign naming as the Yasukuni Shrine.

Other signs told people what, to show respect, they shouldn’t do. There were also signs addressed to any media who came to film events about how they should behave, such as not pointing their cameras at any worshippers.

It’s an attractive shrine, and I took a picture, but let’s not say any more about it, okay?

My intended destination was immediately behind Yasukuni Shrine. I don’t think there’s any way I could have gotten there without passing the shrine.

Shinchi Teien

That intended destination was Shinchi Teien, which is also known in English as Sacred Pond Garden.

The pond is very beautiful, with lots of rocks, trees and other lush vegetation around it.

There is a stone path around the pond. But the path doesn’t go around the full perimeter. At some points, you have to walk on stepping stones to cross the water. That’s another of my many fears. I panic slightly when walking across a body of water, even a tiny body of water, over some not particularly wide, disjointed objects. It can be stones, logs, whatever.

I can remember having that fear even as a child. Other kids would happily walk across a small stream on stones or a log, but I’d panic. Getting across was always a horrible experience for me.

Don’t ask me why. The water doesn’t have to be deep for me to panic. I think I could have easily stood up in the pond with my head above the water. And, despite not having done it for quite some time, I can swim. What’s more, the stepping stones weren’t especially small. No normal person would fear falling off when standing on or walking across them. Still, I had a few panicked moments there.

Nevertheless, I did it. I walked all the way around the small pond. But when I came to the stepping stones, I paused at each one and, after some internal coaxing, plodded hesitantly and gingerly over each stone. As I’ve said at least a few times in this journal. It isn’t easy being me.

Beside the pond, there are three traditional teahouses. That’s part of why I chose Shichi Teien as a destination. My walking tour app mentioned them and said that they each put on a different variety of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

What my app didn’t tell me, and I couldn’t find on any other source, is whether tourists could participate in the ceremonies. Was it something they do for educational purposes? The answer seems to be no.

There was no signage whatsoever by the teahouses. When I was there, some people, all of them dressed in traditional ceremonial Japanese clothing, were milling around by the teahouses. I don’t think they were there for the likes of me.

And so ended my …

Oh, wait. I forgot to mention one important aspect of the pond. There are several large carp of a variety of colours in it. There’s a small platform that abuts one end of the pond. Near it, there’s a machine that sells packages of fish food for ¥100 (less than $1 CDN). I bought a box.

There were already some carp near the platform. As I threw them some food, they remained nonchalant. Like, “Oh, look. Some more food. Maybe I’ll have a bite. Maybe I won’t.”

Some of the carp that were elsewhere in the pond made their way over toward the platform slowly and casually, I think more by coincidence than because they knew about the food. And they had the same attitude toward the food. There was no feeding frenzy whatsoever. Either they were all on a diet, or they were fed so much that they were fully sated.

Okay, forgotten point remembered. Now, I can end this post.