Autumn in Hibiya Park

Another cloudy day. I decided to visit 日比谷公園,  Hibiya Park again. Nice retro street lights. I would not be surprised if this dates back to the late 1880's, which is when the near-by Imperial Palace switched to electric lighting. Most likely the lamps have been there since June 1st,1903 when the area was made a public park, if not earlier.

I decided on visiting Hibiya Park because of a couple of reasons. One was because there are a lot of trees there so there would be a lot of autumn color. 

And there was. 

The Japanese Garden was beautiful despite the inclement weather.

A view of 雲形池, Kumogata Pond and the crane fountain. The fountain is one of the oldest in Japan. 

  There were a few people enjoying the Japanese garden and pond, but not many, so it was easy to get lovely photos.

While I was walking to another section of the park, I passed by フェリーチェガーデン日比谷, Felice Garden Hibiya. 

 The German style bungalow was built in 1910 and the architect was 福 田重義, Shigeyoshi Fukuda Shigeyoshi. He also designed the Jack Tower, Port Opening Memorial Hall, in Yokohama. 

 The Felice Garden Hibiya building has been the park administrative office, park museum and gallery, and now it's a wedding venue.

One of the bird fountains in Hibiya Park. This time it's pelicans. Hibiya Park is a good place for bird watching. This fountain is located in 日比谷公園 第一花壇, the First Flower Garden.  

 The First Flower Garden was part of what made Hibiya Park the first Western style park in Japan. Even in December there were roses and other flowers blooming there. Unfortunately most of the roses are away from walking paths so getting decent photos of them or even smelling their lovely fragrance is a little difficult. Still, they were beautiful to see.

While parts of the park are in a Japanese style, overall the park was designed in a Western style with a large grass area, venues for concerts and paths wide enough for horse drawn carriages.

While there are a lot of older things in the park, there are newer items. Like 古代スカンジナビア碑銘譯, the Scandinavia Rune Stone. Placed by the 心字池, Shinji Pond, in 1967, it commemorates the first flight between Europe and Japan back in 1957. I previously wrote about Shinji Pond in a 2018 post about Hibiya Park. That post is here http://blukats.blogspot.com/2018/04/hibiya-park.html.  The Japanese garden at Shinji Pond is definitely older. The pond was part of the moat for Hibiya Gate for Edo Castle, and part of the gate wall is still there too.

Even against grey skies, the ginkgo trees looked amazing. 

And so did all the trees. 

Roses in December

If you have read my blog posts about Japan before, you might know that the path from Hiratsuka-jinja leads to here. Kyu-Furukawa and it's grand house and gardens.

I've been here before and wasn't planning to visit on my trip but then I read that their roses were still blooming. In December.

So of course I wanted to visit their rose garden once again. While there were less roses, there were also less people in the rose garden.

With the beautiful blue sky, it made for lovely photo opportunities.

And just beyond the roses was the color of autumn in Japan. Which I will get to in my next post. But for now I am skipping ahead to the end of my visit here.

Because once again I wanted to treat myself to something nice. And seeing a bit of the inside of this lovely place is very nice.

I was amused that they offered me the same table I sat at the first time I had tea at Kyu-Furukawa. It is a very nice place to sit and relax.

With beautiful views of the garden. I imagine it must have been very comforting to live here and look out at all that greenery and smell the scent of roses in bloom.

This time I was lucky, they had cake. Orange cake with Darjeeling tea. I would have liked Earl Grey tea with this cake but they didn't have it. Still, it was a lovely moment which I very much enjoyed.