Day 6: Not Planning Can Be Good Too

Today, I had planned to visit a few parks and swing by the Tokyo University campus because I heard it has a beautiful campus but I actually left a little too late in the day to make effective use of my plan, so I ended up winging it a bit.

I forgot it was the weekend so as I made my way to the Koishikawa Kōrakuen Park, I was a bit surprised how busy the area was. The park is adjacent to Tokyo Dome city and I didn't realize at the time but there apparently it was holding the 2024 Central League Climax Series baseball series this week? I don't know anything about baseball but that sounds impressive. It looks like today was Game 4 and the home team (the Giants!) are winning the series so far.

Koishikawa Kōrakuen was a whopping ¥300, double the price of the last park I visited! Just kidding, it definitely felt like a fair price to me and the park had a lot more hills and different terrain than the last one and seemed considerably bigger. I think I spent a bit over an hour wandering around.

After I entered, the first thing I found was a stamp station. It turns out that thexxre is a stamp rally going on to visit some to the Tokyo Metro parks. I have 2 weeks left, so maybe I should do it. I grabbed the stamp just in case I decide to do it later.

The weather was like 80 percent of the way to raining, so the park atmosphere was pretty moody. I think that photos don't do it proper justice with all the lightening they do now though. There were some cool features like this pond, in which workers were trimming all of the trees. I wonder if it's a fun job? I also wonder if they drew straws for who had to put on boots and work in the water. Only 1 out of the 4 was doing it, so I wonder if he minds or not.

I also saw this dude in the water too. I tried to get a photo of it eating the fish (and failed) but the live photo captured it even though the framing wasn't what i wanted. Slowed down to half speed for clarity.

The park was very scenic but one thing I found funny was the juxtaposition of the giant Tokyo Dome just looming in the background. It was also kind of funny when you'd be strolling along peacefully and then hear the gleeful screams of people as they went over the top of the hill of the roller coaster at Tokyo Dome City.

Right as I was leaving, I considered getting something out of the vending machine, but decided not to after I saw all the spiders living inside the machine. Does that normally stop people? I'm not like particularly afraid of spiders, but I'd rather not interact with them if I don't absolutely have to (I hope there's no situation where I have to)

Was going to say "How many spiders can you count?" but then realized maybe they aren't actually spiders and maybe I'd get an ☝🤓

Looking at the photo again even is making me like itchy...

By the time I left, it was close to 5, so I knew I wouldn't make it to another park in time since a lot of them close around then and have last admittance near 4:30, so I decided I would check out the shopping at Tokyo Dome City. Once I got there, I realized it was super busy and was able to find out about the baseball game that was about to begin. I'm not really into baseball so decided I would just go home, failing once again to try Japanese Taco Bell.

Since it was still relatively early, and I hadn't even hit my 10k steps for the day, I decided to walk home. I think it was roughly 2 miles or so and it took me through Jinbōchō, which is a district famous for having a ton of used bookstores.

I stayed on the main street, but even there it seemed like almost every other corner had a bookstore. If I could read Japanese, I'm sure it would be a veritable treasure trove.

As I was getting closer to where I was staying, I realized it seemed pretty lively. That's when I stumbled upon the Nihonbashi Ebisuko Bettara Ichi Market! It seemed like a festival to me, and I only found out what it was after I left. Actually, semantically what is a festival? What is a market?

The fair is right next to Takarada Ebisu Shrine, so I was surprised to see a people lining up to pay their respects and to get their goshuin stamped here as well! It wasn't even directly in the shrine!

I stopped by one of the stalls to grab some Okonomiyaki for dinner. I would share a photo of that as well but I guess I carried it back weirdly because it didn't look very photogenic once I got back. The fair is happening tomorrow as well so I will probably check it out again I think! It's a good thing my plans fell through and I had spare energy reserves to walk home or I would have never known about it!