Full Circle

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And so to Martin's final few days in Japan and the end of my first month. Our trip sees us paying a visit to the garden city of Mito and it's much celebrated landscape garden- Kairaku-en. The gardens are most popular for 3000 plum blossom trees that bloom in February/march, unfortunately having arrived out of season we were unable to enjoy this undoubtedly fantastic spectacle. The gardens however were still beautiful and meticulously maintained which made the walk uphill in 28 degrees centigrade temperatures more than worthwhile.
After the gardens we took an early evening stroll around the lakeside, joined by numerous joggers and the largest numbers of black swans I think I have ever seen in one place, to witness a stunning sunset which made it easy to forget that we were in the middle of a city.
We headed back to the hotel to complete the more mundane tasks of packing for Yokohama and to do the laundry.I decided to use the good old tried and tested method of just throwing the things into the washer and hoping as all of the instructions for the washer and drier were in Japanese. As luck would have it everything came out in one piece and it certainly beat washing the clothes in the bath with soap and then using the hairdryer in a desperate bid to get things even remotely dry!!
The next morning it was off to south of Tokyo and to Yokohama... We both agreed that it had a good vibe,being that it was a little less chaotic than Tokyo but also had that certain cosmopolitan charm about it.
The harbour and park area made for a good people watching spot and we were both enthralled as to the bizarre way people treat their pets (especially dogs) as children. During our one day in Yokohama we saw a woman pushing her dog in a pram, an elderly lady who put hair slides in her dog's ears and most randomly a woman who took her bird out to the park for lunch in it's cage and even found it a nice spot with a pond view in the shade.
We also saw some kind of television drama (we think) being filmed over the road from the hotel although we had no idea what it was or who was staring in it- it certainly was no one we even recognised vaguely.
It was a shame to leave Yokohama but Tokyo beckoned once again.
We spent our last couple of days hopping round on the subway and paying a long overdue visit to Shibuya if just to see the Hachiko statue and Shibuya crossing. Wandering around the busy shopping area of Shibuya it was sensory overload with music, shouting,lights and people everywhere and after a while it became quite draining.. We invested in a bottle of wine to mark the end of Martin's trip and then got ourselves prepared for an early start in the morning- Martin for the airport and a 8km hike for me on the Nakasendo highway

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