Day 10 Sankeien Gardens in the Daylight

Last Friday, E and I spent the evening biking through the heart of Yokohama to a beautiful Japanese Garden where we watched fireflies light up a little valley. I thought it was beautiful and peaceful, but if I'm going to be honest, I was underwhelmed with the amount of fireflies. But I went back to the Sankeien Gardens to see the park in the daylight. While I was there, I got a little firefly education from an awesome park guide.

He told me that there are 2 main types of fireflies here in Japan, the Genji and Heike. They are thought to be named after 2 warring clans from 1185.  I guess it's appropriate that the Genji variety are larger, and brighter, because they won the war. It's folklore that the souls of the samurai that fell in battle inhabit the fireflies. Children are taught to not catch or hurt the bugs out of respect for the samurai souls. 

I was also told that firefly larvae need clean river beds or rice paddies with mineral rich water to grow. Because of the increasing water pollution here in Japan, it is becoming increasingly rare to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitats, especially near urban areas. In fact, there's a firefly nursery in Tokyo that has created a greenhouse complete with an artificial stream to breed fireflies, and so people can enjoy them indoors. Knowing that it's rare to see these little critters where were are, I feel privileged to have seen any at all!

The park is so much bigger in the daylight! They had so much of it blocked off for the firefly night, that it probably only took us 15 - 20 minutes to walk through the whole thing. It took me almost 3 hours to take everything in today! The guide recommended an hour for both the inner and outer gardens, but I took my time and a couple breaks (it was really hot!). The original garden was fairly sparse, but since the war they've been planting trees and now it looks like a forest. Most of the buildings are not original. They were moved here throughout the last century. A lot of the original buildings were destroyed during the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 or World War II.

Lotus flowers

These are a variety of hydrangea and are the prettiest baby blue color

Example of a building's foundation that was destroyed in the Kanto Earthquake

Absolutely an urban oasis

Creeping apricot trees. The branches are supported by crutches.

Where the fireflies come out to play

Japanese farmhouses built in 1735 were not designed for 5'9" women.

Steps? Try a near vertical ladder without rungs. Damn these were steep.

The farmhouse. The steps led up to the attic. 

Three story pagoda, built in 735. What?!? Moved from Kyoto in 1914. That's so old I can't even fathom it. Homer (the poet, not the Simpson) was alive in 730.

You know after walking around in the heat for 3 hours, I WAS HUNGRY! Lunch was:d

Corndog! Loved the convenient ketchup/mustard duo.

Then for dinner we hit up some kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi for an appetizer.

Sushi appetizer. These are our favorites so far. Fatty tuna, tuna roll, and fatty salmon. Guess we're just a bunch of fatties! But they're sooo yummy!

Then we headed next door to Ippudo which is indeed a chain restaurant, but consistently serves some of the best ramen in Tokyo. They only have 3 things on the menu, but they do those 3 things extremely well (not including sides and a seasonal special). The gyoza are to die for and the noodles are cooked perfectly in a rich, but not too rich broth. I've now been here twice and still want more!

Spicy pork ramen from Ippudo, one of the best ramen shops in Tokyo

Garlic pork ramen

Day 5 Lazy Day and Firefly Night

Rainy, muggy day here in Yokohama. We've got a big weekend planned, but not really planned at all. So in order to get ready for that (figuring out transportation, cost, and what to do) I spent most of this rainy day on the computer gathering information on what to do this weekend.

My camera has a super spy zoom. It's amazing exactly how far a 21x zoom is. Here's 2 pictures for comparison. The first one is normal zoom from my hotel room (18th floor), about 3/4 of a mile away.

Here's a fully zoomed in version taken today of a group of school kids presumably on a field trip.

Here's some other super spy pictures taken from my hotel room.

I walked to this building with the CERTE on top, it's about 2 miles away from our hotel

For lunch I had another version of tsukemen. This was a soy-based broth instead of the pork based broth. Yummy, but not as good as the first tsukemen we had. This was from a place called Kookai. The soft boiled eggs are really good. They have a flavor to them, not just regular egg taste. My lunch was served with the broth, some grilled chicken and pork, cold noodles (dip them in the hot broth then eat), a Chinese style dumpling, the egg, bok choy, cabbage, and some bamboo shoots.

For dinner (sorry no picture) we grabbed some fast convenience store food; thin noodles with a curry sauce, cabbage and carrots, and some pork fried rice. We were in a hurry to get to the Sankeien Garden. It's about an hour and a half walk from our hotel, and there's really no direct route with public transportation, but the Garden closed at 9 and E didn't back from work until 6! So in order to get there in time we took the public bike rental, Bay Bike. It's just like the Citi Bike system in NYC. You register on their website, pick the port you want to take it from, choose the bike you want (they're numbered), then you'll get a passcode that you enter on the back of the bike, then off you go! We're not entirely sure that we were supposed to take the bikes as far as we did, but we didn't get in trouble for doing it. For the record, the Bay Bike website is in Japanese, and the English sections are pretty bad Engrish so it's not like I didn't check what the rules were. Anywho, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the bikes had a moto-assist which was super helpful for the hills we had to go up to get the garden.

Now please forgive me because the pictures from the garden did not turn out very well. They're pretty blurry. But the Sankeien Garden is a truly beautiful place. It's like an ancient little town in the middle of a forest. It's mind blowing to think that every living thing was thoughtfully placed there from every lily pad in the lake to every tree. The fireflies were something special too. They fluttered about in a little creekside valley through the Japanese maple leaves. It was so relaxing to watch them light up with the sound of a bubbling creek in the distance. The fireflies themselves are different than the ones we have back in the US. Firstly they're bigger and secondly they light up a different color. I would describe ours as a neon yellow/orange color. These bugs were neon yellow/green. Even in the dark it was evident that this was a special place, and I will surely be going back in the daylight.