Ueno Park & Zoo
Last month was a whirlwind of so many life obstacles I dedicated all my energy to being present and thus haven’t updated the blog in a few weeks. Some things we’ve been going through is a big change in our house move which caused a delay, a trip to Japan for Holy Week, and my surgery which came the day we got back from Japan. I am now 4 days post surgery and while at home recovering I’ve gathered the strength to put together some posts from our Japan trip…
We’ve been to Japan 3 times, Luca twice, and everytime we’re there we fall more and more in love with the city of Tokyo. At first, we truly only loved to stay in Osaka, the former capital of Japan and only an hour away from the old geisha town of Kyoto, Osaka is beautiful for both it’s old and new world charms. Tokyo, on the other hand is much more crowded, tight streets, bright lights, loud noises and very very new world in terms of architecture and way of life. Everything is high tech!
Cherry blossom week is one of the most celebrated natural events in Japan, the cherry blossoms symbolizing the bittersweet fleetingness of beauty. Cherry blossoms only bloom for one week out of the year and then start their descent from branch to ground shortly after blossoming… leaving park walkers in an unforgettable shower of fragrant sakura.
You can spot cherry blossom trees all around Tokyo during this time, but we visited Ueno Park and zoo to get a real immersive experience of sakura showers as well as enjoy an open air zoo for Luca.
If you’re travelling with children, I highly recommend a trip to Ueno Park & Ueno Zoo as you can kill two birds with one stone and enjoy a nice walk in a very Japanese park, while the children can enjoy a few hours in the zoo! Ueno Zoo is an open air zoo with open air enclosures for their animals. It’s incredibly clean and the animals are lively and quite obviously cared for very well. Beautiful cherry blossoms line the zoo and because the enclosures are minimal, with either open fences or open roofs, the cherry blossoms find their way into the animals’ living spaces, giving them their very own pink fragrant flooring.
I wasn’t expecting much at this zoo, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the zoo was much bigger than we expected and now we have a reason to come back and visit! The animal enclosures we did get to visit were the birds, penguins, turtles, hippos and rhinos. Surrounding the zoo is a large grassland that houses turtles and all kinds of fish, and that was Luca’s favorite part.
