A different park

Today I took my parents to see the Showa Memorial Park. It's a very large park on the outskirts of Tokyo. It is over 160 hectares (about 400 acres), twice the size of the park I often ride to and much more developed. The park used to be a Japanese military airbase and post-war was operated by the US military. In 1977 it was returned to the Japanese government. In 1983 part of it was used to establish this park to commemorate the emperor's Golden Jubilee. So it is quite a young park compared to the garden we visited in Kanazawa.

We wandered about for several hours. It's the end of the two-month long flower festival, so things were looking a bit ragged flower-wise, but we still found plenty to look at. I offer some un-edited photos for your enjoyment.

The poppies looked better at a distance than up close.

A portion of the Japanese garden inside the "Japanese" park.

Um, some kind of cool water-surfing insect. There were many of these on the pond.

Mum, loving the trees.

And more pond. So green!

It had rained overnight and sprinkled lightly on and off during the day. This produced wonderful light for photography and appreciating the still-new fresh green leaves.

I forget what these are called.

Segway tour underway.

This was a big tree, about 20m high. It is a Magnolia Obovata (I read the name plate). A tiny bit of Googling tells me the enormous flowers of this variety of magnolia are about 15-20cm in diameter. Unfortunately it is a bit hard to tell that from the photo.

Never hurts to throw a water-feature in.

A lone iris.

Love this stunning tree in the Japanese garden.

We had difficulty finding the National Bonsai Museum because of an inaccurate English map. I eventually asked a Japanese visitor for help and looked at their map, which accurately showed the entrance to this museum. In the Japanese garden, of course! 

 This is about 250 years old. Stunning!