Yoyogi Park and the Imperial Palace

This past weekend we were invited to a small picnic at Yoyogi Park with some people Matt works with. It is one of the largest parks in Tokyo and adjacent to the Meiji Shrine which is a Shrine that was built to honor the spirits of the late Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken.

We started out by visiting the Shrine and surrounding gardens. It is in a 175 acre forest and is so peaceful.

Below is the Torii, which is a traditional Japanese gate.

A wall of Sake barrels that were donated to the Shrine

A traditional Japanese wedding was taking place while we were there which was awesome to see.

A Tea house

Iris are in bloom now so they had some beautiful gardens.

We headed over to the picnic around 1 and we were looking forward to seeing what a picnic was like Japanese style! The biggest difference is that everyone takes their shoes off when they sit down. I also noticed that when a group of school kids were having a picnic at the park earlier in the week; all their shoes were lined up on the side of the blanket. One lady had a pet bunny and for most of the day she also had a 2 year old girl named Kaylin by her side!

Park day pictures certainly would not be complete without having one of Shane and a stick!

This is typical of an outing...notice the guy taking pictures of the kids...we do stick out like a sore thumb!

This is the group we were with. Communication was difficult at times. We used many hand signals! Everyone is SO friendly though!!!

Trying my hardest to get a picture with the kids...they are 1 second from running away!

Here are some random people who started blowing bubbles for the kids. Kaylin was sad to see them go!

On Sunday we celebrated Father's Day because I obviously was off by a week! We found that out when we called Bud and Jane. We were saying Happy Father's Day and Jane politely said "You know it is next week, right?" OOPS! Now Matt claims we get to celebrate it next week too because it "wasn't his fault we celebrated it a week early!" Mmmm...we'll see!

Anyway, the kids both colored Matt pictures and Kaylin made Matt toast and eggs. She was so darn proud of those eggs!

We then caught the bus to the Imperial Palace. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be and I was a little disappointed because I thought we would be able to walk around the gardens or something, but not so. Oh well. We then walked to a park. Yes, another park and then back for dinner.

We had such a great weekend and are thankful for such nice weather. It is the beginning of rainy season so nice days will be harder to find. We had such a nice time at the picnic and it is nice to be able to put names with faces. Matt had a nice pre-Father's Day ( I hope! :) ) and I am so thankful to have such an awesome husband and the best father I could have hoped for our kids to have!

I will add a BUNCH of pictures to the Tokyo slide show on the top right later today, probably once the kids go to bed. Just click on it to check it out!