30 minutes radius goal!

---

Our family can't stay home for more than 12 hours a day. We need to constantly be away from our house, or our kids will go berserk. But we can't travel very far as it is very inconvenient for me and my wife, as we need to rush back home for our kids afternoon siesta. And traveling far is not really a great option for parents with a baby and a toddler. So we always ended up going to the same mall, which is a 2 minute bike ride from our house. God knows how we detest malls, no matter how beautiful it is.

So we made it our goal to visit interesting parks and places we haven't been to, on a radius of 30 minutes travel by subway or bike from our house.

And it was fun as we discovered we had nice parks and interesting places around our neighborhood. We were down to our last 2 places to go to this November, that is the Nagai Botanical Garden and the Shitennoji temple. And we did it! Damn! now we have to again squeeze our brains out, thinking of a convenient trip to do next weekend.

Nagai Botanical Park don't really much have to offer at this time of the year, as most tress and flowers were dead if not dying. It wasn't that cold yet when we came, so the autumn colors are not yet in full display. But roses are in bloom, so we have a nice time visiting the rose garden.

Shitennoji temple was an ok place to go to. It is the oldest state administered temple. But this place is of great historical importance , as s it is the birthplace of Buddhism in Japan. Just don't compare it with the temples and Zen gardens of Kyoto and your visit will be worth it. Mine was way beyond just being worth it.

The main temple housed two very beautiful bronze buddha statues with very detailed and intrinsic markings and designs. I didn't see any "no photo signs" but I know it exist somewhere. So I did take a photo of one of the Budha, got yelled at, but definitely worth the embarrassment. I know me bad, but I was a little disappointed just taking pictures of the temples, because I've seen more lavish and classic ones in Kyoto.

But even without me violating important rules, my family still had a great time at the Japanese Garden. The cost to enter it is around 3.50 USD per adult. Akira had a great time chasing pigeons and looking at the koi pond. They had two man-made waterfall that was made prettier with the autumn colors that surrounds it.

As for parks and temples around our area, we believed we visited all of it. But there are a lot of museums around our area too. Maybe when our son turned 5 and daughter 4, we can start doing museum rounds in our neighborhood too.

---

Photos

Shitennoji temple
look at the details

Shitennoji Garden
find your center, ohmmmm