Tokyo (Monday - Shinjuku Park)

In the afternoon, we went to Shinjuku Park (200 Yen). Actually, some people begged off and shook their fists and me and Eugene later because they had wanted to go to this park instead of Ueno in the morning. But it was worth it to go to both. On the other hand, Shinjuku Park was perhaps the most beautiful park I've ever seen.

One side of the park featured large lawns.


I saw these flowers at every park we visited; they look like they needed to be drawn by Autocad.


Look at those trees!


On the other side of the park, there were a series of ponds. A Chinese style house stood on the side of one pond; I took the next two pictures from there.


Eugene remarked, and I agreed, that the whole place looked like a park of perfect bonsai and all of the people were shrunk down to fit into it. Also, we agreed that we had to come back to Japan.


Vacation was inexorably coming to an end; some of the people had already left for other parts of Japan. Most everybody else were taking off tomorrow. And we all split up for dinner. I ran off to have dinner with my old high-school friend, Meg. She took me to a restaurant that is part of the same chain of restaurants as the one that Prime Minister Koizumi had once taken President Bush. She had thought about taking me to a theme restaurant -- they have Alice in Wonderland, Romeo+Juliet, Alcatraz, vampires, and ninjas (ninjas!). Afterwards we all convened at Takemi and Kumiko's apartment for tea and goodbyes.