Tokyo Now

Tokyo Now#15: Why not spend an autumn holiday strolling at a Japanese garden?

Kiyosumi for Tokyo Now Tokyo Now

Now that the scorching summer heat is over, how do you spend your autumn holidays?

Monday and Tuesday of this week were national holidays, so we had a four-day long weekend. As travel restrictions were eased recently, some ventured out to remote areas as far as Okinawa or Hokkaido. But most people seem to have preferred spending their holidays at places not far from home.

Tokyo has many chisan-kaiyushiki gardens, that is, the gardens designed to stroll around a pond and hills with trees and rocks aesthetically laid out. One of them is Kiyosumi-teien garden located on the east side of Sumida River. The garden was built by Yataro Iwasaki, an industrialist who founded Mitsubishi conglomerate, at the end of 19th century. Later, the garden was donated to Tokyo City. He searched for various kinds of stones across Japan and placed them beside the pond.

Walking along the street from Kiyosumi-teien to Fukagawa Edo Museum, a small but intriguing museum that exhibits the town of old Edo, I found a scarecrow competition was being held on the street. There is no wonder that many scarecrows are made to scare the coronavirus away.

Written by Chino

From TFWT PA&C