Walking tours of Bunkyo Ku

Last Sunday, Greg and I took advantage of the lovely sunny weather and tried to find some of the sights in our local area, recommended by a booklet that Greg picked up from the Ward office...

We took the bike and made our way to Gokokuji Temple [護国寺], taking a walk around the cemetery

A very nice tree, outside the entrance.

...some plum blossom has already started to bloom...indicating the start of Sakura [桜] season (cherry blossom)

We wondered around the cemetery for a bit then we headed towards a crazy shaped cathedral, St. Mary's Cathedral. I did manage to get us lost on the way...and we ended up asking a Japanese person (who took the very much appreciated initiative to answer in english) to point us in the right direction. Very impressive from the outside, but very dark and depressing on the inside (probably due to the fact we got there around 4pm and the sun was setting...) . Anyway, the huge sweeping concrete walls felt a bit oppressive from the inside.

MMMmmmMmmmmm Concreeette

After the Cathedral we tried to find one of the parks the map indicated (we got a bit distracted by a cat sitting on a wall on the way there...which was busy being photographed by a japanese dude+face mask on his mobile phone.) The cat, who didn't seem to like his new found fame then sauntered off into the distance to avoid the glare of the cameras.

" Leave me alone you crazy Humans! Have you not seen a cat before?!"

Unfortunately, when we got to the park, it was already shut, so we were going to head for some food, when we happened to pass another garden mentioned in the guide...which turned out to be the Gardens attached to a 5star hotel [Chinzan-So, 椿山荘]. It was a very nice garden, it even had some stone statues which had been moved from Kyoto (and another place which I can't remember). It looked like a nice place to go for Sakura [桜] it also had a very nice 3-tiered pagoda in it...

The crappy photos were taken from my mobile whilst the nice photos were taken by Greg...