Slightly hungover (or was it still slightly drunk?) I headed yesterday to what is described in my guide book as the nicest of Tokyo`s parks - the Shinjuku Gyoen out in the west of central Tokyo. I`m finding the subway much easier to use now so shot out there nice and early to sit in the sun and read a book. Being a Sunday it was full of families having picnics but I found a nice corner and settled down for an hour or two. The park itself is very pretty, with an English landscaped part, a French-style garden and a traditional Japanese garden (with feck-off big carp). Here`s a photo of the English bit with a bit of modern architecture in the background...

The french garden is a bit weird. The trees looked like what I`d imagined a Triffid was when I first read the book....

The japanese gardens were immaculate (as I`ve come to expect)...

After I`d finished in the Shinjuku Gyoen I headed south to the Meiji-jingu which is Tokyo`s biggest Shinto shrine apparently. This one is huge and more of a wood than a park, as you can see.

The shrine itself is quite impressive with lots of people in traditional dress milling around, plus an awful lot of tourists! I headed south to the gate at the south-eastern tip to see the cosu-play-zoku which only happens on a Sunday. It`s supposed to be where teenage girls dress up in weird costumes and all meet up. In actuality it looked like some 12-year olds had just seen the Rocky Horror picture show performed by S Club 7. I didn`t take any pictures as it was just wrong - and would`ve been on an 18-year old. Gary Glitter I ain`t. Further down the road I saw a bunch of grown men dressed as James Dean dancing around a ghetto blaster playing Johnny B Goode (sung in Japanese obviously). Weird doesn`t even touch the sides....

Anyway, here`s the shrine.

Today I got up very early and headed out to see the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens which are shut on Monday`s. D`oh! Bit of a waste of a morning so this afternoon/evening I`m heading on the monorail to Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Bay that has loads of things to see apparently. I`ve abandoned the plan to go to Kyoto for the day as there`s enough to do here to last a fortnight!