Today was a busy, full day because I went to do a couple of different things. I began my day with the intention of going to a museum that ended up being closed. I continued on to the Imperial Palace and its gardens. In lieu of the first museum, I threw in a trip to another museum that was open to make up for it. And finally, I ended up back in Shinjuku to take some night pictures. The above picture was taken walking into the Imperial Palace Gardens.
This is the Nijubashi bridge leading to the Imperial Palace itself. The Edo Castle, formerly the Tokugawa family's residence, was later renamed the Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace. The current Emporer and his imperial family still occupy this residence.
The gardens around the Imperial Palace. Very nice area, but interestingly surrounded by what feels like posh 5th Avenue, New York. Such a dramatic contrast.
A lot of this area was closed to the public and was heavily guarded. All of these pictures are representations of how close I could get.
On to my substitute museum, the Edo-Tokyo Museum. I was absolutely blown away by this museum. It has so much to offer, all very well displayed. I was a little skeptical prior to going in, as it really isn't prominently featured in any of the guidebooks. But, it was a real treat with a model of the Nihombashi Bridge (the real current one taken a few days ago on my long walk) and a vast display of re-creations of Edo-period and Meiji-period Tokyo.
This was a small diorama of Edo-period Tokyo 'downtown'.
They even had full-scale representations of homes and dwellings from the Edo-period, with the interior completely full of examples of housewares.
This was by far my favorite part. This is a representation of how a woodblock print is made. You can see the steps that it went through to produce the final print on top. The lower section is the actual woodblock and the color added is the one in the middle. As you look down moving from right to left, you can see which color was added and in what place for each step of the process.
And then they had a full historical Japanese outline of World War II. This is an unexploded bomb shell. I stress that it is only the shell, there was nothing else inside of it.
These following pictures are the end of the day getting dark in Shinjuku. Ever since I came to Shinjuku a couple of days ago I've been wanting to come back, because I knew that it would be like this.
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