Happy Greenery Day

Saturday, April 29, 2006. 8:10pm

Today is a national holiday in Japan. Greenery Day (not to be confused with Green Day) is celebrated every April 29th, and marks a week long appreciation of nature.

We slept in this morning after a very good night's sleep for both of us.

We treked back out to Shinjuku Gyoen, the park that was closed yesterday in preparation of Greenery Day. The park reminded us both of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It's very beautiful, and large. It has gorgeous Japanese Gardens, tea houses, green houses, and also French and English Gardens. According to this article that I found on the web, Shinjuku Gyoen is a main park where Greenery Day is celebrated annually. It was free admission, they had events and activities for kids, and we noticed a lot of groups with guides describing different plants, trees and animals. My favorite part of walking around the park was seeing all of the gorgeous Cherry Blossom trees which are just now losing their amazing pink blooms. We loved seeing the ground covered in a blanket of pink underneath the trees. It was very magical.


Sitting underneath the Cherry Blossom Trees

After spending a bit of time walking around the park, we took the subway to Ginza, which is one of the main shopping districts here. Unfortunately, it started to rain, which is a shame, as there were plenty of pretty flowers and displays set up for Greenery Day.

We walked around Ginza for a bit, doing a bit of window shopping, and ended up at Hakuhinkan Toy Park, which is a toy store that Andrew had told me about. I was hoping to find some Raggedy Ann merchandise here in Japan, but alas, there was none to be found. Raggedy Ann had a short stint at popularity here a few years back, and merchandise featuring the different Raggedy Ann characters were made exclusively for the Japan market for a while. I was lucky enough to be photographed and interviewed for the Raggedy Ann and Andy Japanese Fan Book in 2001!

Once we finished walking around Ginza, we took the subway to the Asakusa Kannon Temple. The temples themselves were busy, but at first had to make our way through the crowds and market area of tourist shops. This was the only area that we've come across so far that has had so many tourists and tourist vendors, which was a bit ironic, since we were visiting a temple. We found a few smaller temples around the main one that weren't as crowded, and there we were able to really enjoy the beauty and spirituality of the area. We read our fortunes through the same I Ching fortune system that I learned in China from my Grandma in 1992. We also burned incense, and lit candles. It was really nice.

By the time we finished at teh Temple, we were pretty exhausted and returned to our hotel by 6:00.

Tomorrow, we're planning to spend the day in Harajuku. I've been looking forward to this for a long time!