East Gardens of the Imperial Palace

Today we welcomed guests from USA, Ukraine, Turkey, Korea, UK, Switzerland and Australia.The wind was quite cold & strong this day, and guests were shivering.. We appreciate everyonefor getting through the tour with us despite this condition. We thank our guests again for their participation, and wish everyonea wonderful stay in Japan. As for myself I had an opportunity to participate in the Imperial Palace tour on the next day. Since the Imperial Palace is next to the East Gardens of the Imperi...

Thank you for all the guests on Feb27! It was a nice weather, and luckily, we could enjoy plum and a kind of cherry blooming. In general, Cherry blosssoms bloom in late March or early April, but there are some species of winter-blooming cherry trees in the east garden. By the way, in this season, many of Japanese put on masks and one of guests asked me why. Some of them put masksfor prevention of flu or getting cold, but I think major reason isfor their pollen allergy (including me!!). Actually,...

Thank you for all the guests for joining the tour. Today we welcomed 19 Guests from Canada, Australia, Brazil, the U.K. Indonesia and Philippine. It’s a little bit cold but we can find herald the coming of spring during the tour. The early-blooming cherry trees are already flowering at the Island of cherry blossom in the East Garden. This lovely pink really fascinates us. By the way, do you know Tofu?  It is Japanese traditional food made from soybean. It's so soft and easy to break. Let me intr...

ThankyoufortheguestskindlyjoinedourtouronFeb　20. Wehad29guestsfrom10 countriessuchasU.S.A.Italy,Germany,Indonesia,Singapore, andetc. Weformed4groups , andeachgrouphadabout10peopleincludingsomeournewlyjoined tourguidemembers. Asusual,westartedtourfromTokyoStation,andendeditupattheHirakawamonGate. Unluckily,itwasrainingallthroughtheafternoon,anditwascold. Thenwetriedtotakeacoursetogetoutoftherainfromtimetotime. Therearesomesheltersonthecourse,suchasOteresthouse, Honmaru-parkresthouse. Theweatherit...

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. It was very warm day, even in the middle of winter season. We enjoyed our tour with 30 or more foreign visitors. Let me attach some photos of today’s participants. Near the rest house in the East garden of imperial palace, there are some MITSUMATA trees planted which are used as raw material of Japanese bill paper. And MITSUMATA means “pronged to three” in Japanese. Can you see the branches are forked into three in this photo? By the way, 14th Feb. is ...

Thank you for joining us on the national holiday, called "National Foundation Day." On that day we welcomed 19 guests from USA, Australia and Spain. It was cold but the sky was very clear. We were divided into 3 groups. Why this day is called "National Foundation Day" is that it is believed that first emperor in history was inagurated on that day more than 2600 years ago. The name of first emperor was Jinmu. Some scholars claim it was a legendary figure. Current emperor Akihito, is 125th from Ji...

Thank you for the guests kindly joined our tour on 6-Feb. We had 21 guests from 6 countries such as U.S.A. Australia, U.K., Finland, Singapore, and Thailand. Some guests came to Japan to enjoy skiing, although it was Super bowl weekend, and in the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere. We realized ski is Hot!! We formed 4 groups and each group had 9-10 people including our newly joined members. The # of the newly joined member exceeds 50, and last week all of them had classroom orientation...

Thank you for the guests kindly joined our weekday tour on 4th -Feb. We totally had 4 guests from USA, Canada and Germany. Since we only had four guests, the tour itself became very cozy and friendly, like a private tour. For example, a guide prepared “Charm in the Park Hunting” game, or another guide made “Origami” balloon with our 12-years-old guest. After the tour in East Gardens of the Imperial Palace, we went to Asakusa (Please note this Asakusa tour is our special tour so far, subject to t...

Thank you for the guests kindly joined our tour on 30-Jan. We totally had 23 guests from several countries, divided three groups. It was very cold & gray day on last Saturday. Weather forecast said we would have snow here, but fortunately (unfortunately? for some people), we didn’t. Usually we have snow once or twice in a year here in Tokyo. It means Tokyo people are not good at snowy weather and have unusual problem EVERY TIME, like subway/railway delay or suspension, some fractured people by s...

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming! We could share our precious time with 18 foreign visitors from all over the world. Let me introduce our many participants with the following photos. In Edo castle site, there are three houses to guard each gateon the way tocastle palace. Second one is called Hyakunin Bansho in Japanese. As itwas very important to guard, special force team at that time was assigned. Can you guess? It is Ninja! Special Iga or Koga family members were in shift. We hear Ni...