The third Monday of this month was a national holiday "Repect-for-the-Aged-Day", and I went to a place where lots of old people like to visit. It's called "Kairakuen", and was originally made by the 9th local lord of the Mito clan "Nariaki Tokugawa". This park is best-known for its plum trees, and gets overcrowded in February and March.
The main gate is at the northwest side of this park, but people usually go through this East gate. You can enter this park for free, but you have to pay about 2 dollars to see a traditional house that I'm going to show you later.
I've seen many Japanese parks, but this is the second biggest city park in the world after Central Park in New York City. While I was in this park I didn't know where I was exactly.
What is interesting about this park is that one of its sides is occupied by a railway called "The Joban line", which I showed you in this post. The train cars you're seeing is a limited express "Super Hitachi".
As seen in any other tourist spot, this park also had some souvenir shops.
As I told you, this park is known for its plum trees, so it was selling plum ice cream. I wanted to try it, but I was still on a diet. I hope this dieting will be over soon so that I can show you many sweets with close-up pics.
The city this park is in is called Mito, and it is the capital city of my prefecture. Mito is famous for fermented soy beans called "Natto", which I also showed you in this post. And this is a pic of Natto souvenirs. This Mito Natto is often coupled with a pic of Tengu, which is this red long-nosed goblin.
What would you say to this Natto snacks? It didn't taste good when I had it years ago. Natto is good as it is. The three guys on the package are from an anecdote "Mitokoumon", in which they traveled across Japan to sort out the bad. Its TV series was enjoyed mainly by old people. Here's a link to a Youtube video of Mitokoumon.
And I saw telephone booths that were set up the Japanese way. Old people wouldn't have cellphones, so they'd need these to call up their family members.
This Kairakuen is also renowned for its bush clovers that blossom in September in Japan. But when I came here most of them weren't in full bloom. You have to check the official website of this park in advance to be informed of a nice day to come here.
-to be continued-
