Today I woke up to cloudier day and looked like it might actually rain so picked up a coat for a change when I left my apartment. Picking up nikuman and anman(similar to nikuman except has bean paste inside it. Not my favourite but figured to take one for a change) along with lemon tea for drinks I headed toward the station.
Goal for today was first a place called Kyodo no Mori. So after a while I reached Koremasa station which is located somewhere on western Tokyo(I think). This looked like easiest railstation to walk to target. Bus possible also elsewhere but distance wasn't that big and need to save a cash anyway.
Yeah this is still in Tokyo. Not a sight you would necessarily think when you think of Tokyo. I soon walked past 3 soccer/baseball field where was large group of boys practicing soccer. Everywhere was warnings about "foul balls". Though maybe more in case of baseball practice :D
On route ran into this little garden. Nice.
Where's my fishing rod! That pool was filled with carps .D Funny looking fish.
Nice little park.
So with this I arrived to my station and paid surprisingly cheap(200 yen) ticket price. There was also as usual huge army of kindergarden kids coming up. While first guy was chatting with ticket seller I made quick head count estimation. Roughly 10 plus change per row(kids were standing in nice rows). How many rows? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and coming and third bus already approaching. That's a lot of kids!
Needless to say voice level was quite high :D
Anyway good time to say what Kyodo no Mori actually is. It's park known for not only flower type there is(not at this time of year though) but also for preserved historical buildings. Groovy! Unfortunately by now I had ran out of batteries for my camera so back to resorting to my trusty phone camera.
First building was actually former school. Entering in I put my shoes to shoebox and took in slippers and started exploring open rooms. Some were off entry but quite a few rooms available.
Love that kids drawing there :D
Nice little bird! Eagle I think it was.
Japan has it's maps with Japan in center.
Then again...Center is really matter of saying arbitarirly where it is. Europeans have no specific right to say they are in center. Though albeit there is something to be said about having standards.
I like these old photographs.
This is actually quite remiscient of what you see in any anime that takes place in schools. School architecture doesn't seem to have changed all that much in past 100 years or so in Japan...
Think these were practice writing.
Butterflies as well.
Papers and books were held in these.
I guess teachers made speeches over there?
Everything was so small :D Small chairs, small tables.
Getting back I arrived to see march of the kids as they had sorted out themselves in the ticket area and were proceeding in groups toward their target. Quite a few groups were going in. Had bit of hard time taking photos as I wasn't feeling like taking photos of unknown kids.
Wonder what these are?
I decided to head into interior route of another building since kids seemed to be going elsewhere.
This turned out to be area where you could drink tea and cake(for a price) but not for quite a while so didn't end up doing that. Too early start for me.
Pathways here are narrow. Japan is one cramped country for sure.
Saw group of kids then go toward forward so figured I'll take the left route instead. No need to specifically walk among swarm of kids. Plenty of room for everybody here:D
So walking through I got into this little pond.
Oh looky. Kids coming on left. They were heading on the same direction after all...Can't run away! Can't run away!
Haha. I had wondered when I arrived why staff were setting up chairs. They were there for group shots that the children group started doing.
That's something I have noticed that when Japanese school kids/kinder garden kids go somewhere they take group shots. Guess it's nice memory of the trip.
Rainbow was even visible.
Heading where kids had come from(no way they come here right?) I then found little water fall.
Yet another selfie. I proceeded to walk onward and came to plum tree area and...
What the hell is THIS statue doing here? Why randomly have t-rex statue anyway?
Bit more normal statue :D
Plum trees plenty. I'm only 3 months too early for those to bloom :D
Japanese seems to like statues of naked women.
Another carp filled pool. Curiously when I stepped next to the pool carp came forward as if to stare at me...Wonder if I could have been able to grab one by hand(but I have suspicion that falls under "forbidden" here!)
This bridge left to what looks like cafeteria but not sure if it was over but had anyway drinks with me to keep me going.
This I'm not sure what it was. Looked like some sort of place to build/repair stuff but didn't look like it was open.
That's bunch of old toys...
Inside the mystery building.
These are interesting looking toys for sure.
This looked like old well but peeling over it looked like shut off(bars there). Presumably so that no kid would accidentally fall into there.
Clock. But not just clock. It's also location for "time capsule". Hidden container buried in 1984 for locals to open it exactly 100 years later. So still quite a long time left. Wonder what's in there? Will never find that out though for SURE.
Former city hall.
Again took off shoes and proceeded on slippers.
Guess this was waiting room?
Mayors table.
And that's another view of the mayors room. Even he had to settle for small room it seems.
(Then again last time I was in Japan I saw room the current crown prince had slept. My current room in Japan is bigger than that was! Crowded means small rooms even for big guys here it seems)
Then I headed back without too much of a problems. And proceeded to look for my NEXT goal. I had planned to go to Japan sword museum. I had even found helpful video(well 2) showing route from 2 different stations. I had took screenshots of the easier one so went to the station. This time nothing could go wrong right?
RIGHT?!?
Wrong...
What I had missed was that the damn videos had been labeled miscorrectly on opposite stations. Sure video itself had correct station but I had missed that one. So I had screenshots of route...From another station. Just great. Spent a lot of time walking around the Hatsudai station looking for that "very small side alley" when everything looked like main streets of Helsinki! Or rather even bigger!
Eventually decided to stop by for a lunch as I was getting seriously pissed off. Was hungry, tired, right leg in slight pain and totally puzzled how this could be so hard. Spotting curry-rice restaurant decided I would be able to at least sort the first problem.
Curry-rice with ice tea and some salad. Familiar food from last trip, first time in this trip. Felt more like human again after meal so with renewed energy circled over building and found a map. Good. I had screenshot from google map so with this maybe I can locate myself and get there without video. Except I could not recognize anything from the map comparing to google map. ARGH!
Thankfully local helped me out and pointed location on google map(flipping my phone 180 degree for further help) and showed streets I would need to take. Yey! This proved to be easy to follow route and was in there quickly. Alas no photographing of swords.
Did get these two at least from outside.
On the back I opted to retrace the screenshot route and found the different station and verified the above mentioned mistake once I got home.
Phew what a trip. If I had known what a mess it would come to I wouldn't have come as while the sword museum was interesting it was still small and seen swords before so wouldn't have been worth the effort. But all good that ends well.
After this I went first to Harajuku. Made another trip to omotesandou to buy souvenir for my little brother(got it) so souvenirs for family are more or less done. Then I walked through takeshita doori again. Noticed more halloween costumes going on now. Unfortunately even if I had asked and got permission to take photos couldn't have since my phone had run out of battery as well(this is why I took specific camera with me rather than rely on just phone). Pretty interesting clothes visible. Then walked through to Shibuya to turn in my JR pass. That usage will start on 5th of november.
Then stopped by on food market for more sushi(forgot to take photos. Well I tried but phone was still too low power and was so hungry that forgot why I hadn't eaten them already :D) and to shinjuku to see if I could buy something for me but didn't find anything interesting this time.
