Rikugien Garden

Hurrah, I'm fucked!

                                      
      
This morning began with Kris losing his passport. Now, see, this is kind of a big deal, since foreigners in Japan are mandated to carry their passports with them at all times. A police officer can totally decide to break your balls by randomly asking you if you have your passport, and kicking you 'round the curvature of the earth back into your country if you don't. Though I have not yet been inspected in such a way, it's happened to some of the other tenants of New Koyo before.

And so, Kris and Rodrigue and I spent a few hours this morning backtracking through Kris's steps to help find the big oaf's passport. Sure enough, we found it at the Western Union money exchange, where this tall alpha-asian, a rare specimen amongst his kind, handed Kris back his documents.


And so , everything was as normal, Kris was un-fucked, and we celebrated with dinner. A plate like the one on this picture costs the equivalent of four dollars. It's delicious; and healthy, too, I think.




Having made it out with his documents, Kris decided to retire back to base, leaving Rodrigue and I to ponder our next visit in Tokyo. We settled for Rikugien garden.
Now, realize that westerners and the Japanese have different concepts of the word, "garden". Rather than just a bunch of plantations with nice flowers, Rikugien is a picture-perfect patch of nature outlined by beautiful simplicity. It's a nice place to immerse yourself within a rare nature that isn't easily found in Tokyo.

It's a relaxing place in general with a number of turtles and koi and great ravens circulating in such a way that you'd forget that you're in the center of an enormous metropolis. Well, figuratively. Unless you have Alzheimer's, in which case it's more literal.







We must've spent three hours here. The garden (more like a park, really) is ridiculously large, and there are a number of scenic spots.

Also, Nephilia-family spiders! We spotted like, ten of these in the first twenty minutes in Rikugien. I hear these babies can go up to five inches, legs and all, but most of the ones we saw were around three or less; nothing like the candy-ass ones back home. The silk of these spiders can be used to produce bulletproof vests, though I don't know if it's these ones specifically or another spider of the same family.

Yeah, I know I ruined the whole garden for a bunch of you.