Globetrotting Peanuts

An Autumn Day in the park

You only have one day off to enjoy this week. Its starting to get colder, but is a sunny day. What do you do? You go for a picnic of course!

Just 40 minutes from our apartment is one of Tokyo’s biggest parks that lies in the very heart of Tokyo, Shinjuku Gyoen National Park. It is home to several different areas, dedicated to capturing the nature of various countries. Our favourite is the English lawn which looks exactly like it sounds, a giant area where the grass is perfectly manicured to look like a stroll through an English yard (also a great place to play cricket). Another highlight of the park is, of course, the Japanese gardens, complete with lanterns and a shrine. Other areas of the park are dedicated to play areas for families, which are always popular considering no one has a backyard for their kids to play in. At certain times of the year, the park even holds flower exhibition that are strategically placed throughout the park including chrysanthemum exhibit which showcases the different colours, shapes and sizes of the beautiful winter flower.

With a bag full of snacks and picnic mats, our first stop was the greenhouse. But, when I say greenhouse, I don’t mean the one your grandma has in her backyard. Think of a big giant greenhouse with 2 levels and prehistoric looking plants, oh, and a pond. It was a greenhouse on steroids but was so peaceful and calming. There was an array of plants with a rooftop walkway to help show off the climbers and help visitors to fully capture the largeness of the greenhouse.

We settled on our spot for the next few hours on the English lawn, spread out our picnic mats and got snacking. Fortunately, I had just received a wonderful package from friends back home that had all manner of our favourite Aussie treats. So, Shapes, Cadbury choccy, and the Peanut Van peanuts got us through lunch. A park is one of the few places in Tokyo where you can see kids actually being kids. So, most of our time was spent people-watching, enjoying the sounds of children laughing and watching as poor grandparents were trying to run after them. Another activity however was planning our family’s visit to Japan (yay!) which would include another trip back to the park for Christmas lunch. This was followed by a short nap period in which we huddled under a blanket as the chilly winds began to pick up.

Eventually, after getting too cold, we got up and continued our afternoon stroll. Our stroll took us through the beautiful Japanese gardens and, to our amazement, a Chrysanthemum exhibition! The stunning and vibrant flowers were at every turn, as we followed the arrows to the next exhibit. Every time the flowers were displayed in different colours and arranged in different ways. They were spectacular to see considering we didn’t think we’d see any pretty flowers coming into winter. However, eventually, the flowers came to an end and it was time to head home.

Although it was coming into winter and the leaves and grass had begun to change colour, both of us had been to the garden in summer when everything was stark green. No matter what time of year you visit this beautiful park, you’ll find seasonal differences. For this reason, we eventually decided to get an annual pass for the park! If we visited just twice, it was worth it for us. The bonus of this big and beautiful park is that it actually lies on our train line therefore, it is very simple and easy to get to when we are in need of a nature fix.

A Christmas Tale

T’was Christmas Day and all through the park, were cheers of joy and songs of…just kidding. Japanese people don’t celebrate Christmas or, if they do, it’s at KFC. Don’t ask me why, it’s a weird Japan tradition to visit the Colonel himself and eat Fried Chicken on Christmas day. BUT, our family was with us for Christmas so we were going to celebrate in the best way we could!

Our usual big Aussie Christmas is hosted by our parents and welcomes all our extended family for Christmas lunch, and swims in the pool (remember it’s a summer Christmas down under). This year was obviously going to be different but we were just so thankful to have our family with us for the best day of the year. We cooked up a feast…well, what feast we could with a stove and a microwave and headed to Shinjuku Gyoen for a Christmas lunch. The park looked and felt very different compared to the last time we were there. Mostly because it was basically empty as it was a chilly 8 degrees and cloudy on Christmas Day. But, we were determined to make the most of it anyway! The beautiful English-lawn grass had become brown and crusty and the leaves on the trees had all fallen away. But we didn’t care, it was Christmas Day!

Fortunately, the 2 weeks before Christmas is a quiet time for us Assistant Language teachers. Exams are finished and there’s no classes so, Georgia took the opportunity to make Christmas crackers for us, by hand. We tried looking for some on Amazon but honestly they were quite expensive so, instead she used her creativity to whip up some crackers. Of course these crackers enclosed the all-important jokes and paper hats which we wore proudly all through our lunch in the park. Did it look strange? Absolutely but as we were the only people in the park, it really didn’t matter.

Unfortunately, a breeze did start to creep up during our Christmas celebrations so when everyone eventually got chilled to the bone, we had a walk through the other gardens and headed back to the apartment for a post-Christmas lunch rest and warm drinks.

A summer visit to the Park

I mentioned before that the park can drastically change between seasons. So let’s now enjoy a look at the park in the middle of a hot and humid Tokyo summer. Firstly, I will mention that most people in Tokyo do not have a backyard, or even a balcony. So public parks for Tokyoites are often their only chance of venturing into the outdoors and letting the kids run off some steam. Because it was a stunning Sunday when we decided to enter the park, we spent a good amount of time just finding somewhere to sit in the shade! Talk about standing room only, we wandered around the park for awhile wondering whether we would ever find a nice place to sit in the shade. The park is absolutely massive but apparently the rest of Tokyo also saw the weather forecast for a nice day and had the same idea as us. We eventually managed to find a place to set up camp (and by camp, I mean our 2 mini picnic blankets) and even managed to snag some shade (very necessary in 37 degree heat).

We enjoyed our little pre-packed lunch and I got to play with my new toy first the first time…the GoPro Hero 8! I had been thinking about purchasing this little guy for awhile and finally bit the bullet as we were planning on doing some Scuba Diving in the near future. I used the park as a little practice run to figure out some of the features. So, while Georgia (predictably) had about a 20 million hour nap, I played around taking photos, and time lapses of all the cutie Japanese kids playing in the sunny weather.

This time, we skipped the greenhouse and decided to stick to the outdoor spaces. If you look at the date of this adventure, ‘summer 2020′ you’ll notice there is a reason we stuck to the outdoors. Yep, our old friend Mr. Corona. So, we were surprised so many people were out and about during the pandemic but at the time, Japan had limited case numbers and obviously everyone had the same idea of going outdoors to a public park to try and enjoy some fresh air. It’s always hard to tell in Tokyo just how many people will have the same idea as you.