A walk of contrasts: wandering outside the Imperial Palace

Today, I had a free afternoon and was near Tokyo station so I thought I'd drop by the Imperial Palace. Since this was a little impromptu, I wasn't expecting to get super close (past a certain point, you need to have reserved a spot in a tour group), but I figured there are gardens and the like that should be nice.

Anyway, I managed to make my way there without too much trouble despite only having a general sense of where it was, and I got to observe the contrast between the moat, old walls, old bridge and traditional-looking buildings...

...and the very modern city just across the street. 

Personally, I thought this was an interesting contrast. I got to spend much time thinking about this contrast too since the first gate I approached was closed. Since it was a nice day, I didn't really mind and figured I'd walk to the next gate hoping it would be open.

A nice park-like area.

The grounds of the Imperial Palace are surrounded by series of really large moats. On the palace side of the moats, there are walls, watchtowers, steep hills that are verging on cliffs and of course, cameras and loudspeakers. On the public side, there are fences and hedges. Apparently nobody trusts the moat to do its job.

Surrounding all of this is a very well-used exercise path. I arrived sometime around one in the afternoon and saw a lot of runners and cyclists. The path also runs through a few parks where people were enjoying their lunches or napping on benches. It was quite a pleasant walk.

However, at some point I realized that I visited most of the gates and they were all closed. The only gates I hadn't visited were the ones in front of the station and moreover, I had walked past the area with the Kitanomaru park (which is also near the Science Museum). I figured that maybe the grounds were closed for the day and headed off to check out the other park.

To get there, I crossed the street before retracing my path since the sign for the exercise trail indicated that one should go around it counter clockwise and I really didn't feel like dodging runners or cyclists. This meant that I got to walk in front of the British embassy (which I didn't photograph because some embassies don't like when you do that) and had access to a path that I'd seen earlier that looked good to explore.

It was a really interesting trail because it looked almost like some woods, except with a view of another moat and a highway on one side and a boulevard lined by perfectly manicured shrubs on the other. It was also very peaceful and much less busy than the exercise path.

Eventually, I arrived outside what I think was called the National Crafts Museum or something (I failed to take a picture of the sign and Google isn't being cooperative). It was an overtly Western-style building with some interesting sculptures out front. I also found the Science Museum, which was... well, they did not see fit to build a very attractive building for a science museum. I wasn't in a mood for museums though, so I wandered off to the park.

Despite being artificial, it still looks really nice.

Kitonomaru park (the signs claim it is a garden, but the kanji is the same for both so either is probably fine) turned out to be quite nice. While part of the park is really well-manicured grass for picnics and somewhat artificial looking ponds with definitely artificial islands of grass, there's also a fairly large forested part.

One thing I love about spots in Tokyo that are forested is that the sounds of the city just seem to disappear and without seeing any buildings, you can pretend you're not in the biggest city in the world. 

I didn't explore all of the forested area because I was getting a bit tired and the trails seemed to branch and meet each other in all kinds of ways, but it was really nice. I also found a lovely little waterfall...

...and a spot to cross the stream in my favourite possible way.

Yes, the best method for stream crossing
involves stepping stones.

I then headed toward Tokyo station which meant going around the Imperial Palace grounds and covering more of the exercise path. Until I found an open gate. Well, two open gates sorta. It turns out that the Sakuradamon (I almost added gate here, but mon means gate so that would just be redundant) is always open.

This was the only angle I could photograph
without getting some tourist in the shot.

Unfortunately, on that area of the palace grounds, it was not very exciting. There was a fancy (and famous) bridge leading to the part of the grounds that weren't open, but otherwise it was a lot of short trees and grass that was fenced off and a large open area with gravel. Looking at a map later, it looked like much of that area was designated as a shelter for "those who cannot go home" which I'm guessing means shelter after a disaster of some sort. It was nowhere near as nice as the Kitanomaru park.

As I left the palace grounds, I did manage to learn why almost all of the gates were closed. It turns out that the East Garden (which is apparently most of the Imperial Palace grounds) is closed on Mondays and Fridays. It would have been nice if this was indicated on any of the other gates as well, but I guess this just means that I'll have to go back at some point to explore some more.