A trip to Kichijoji

 To say good bye to the silver week we decided to take a stroll to one of the most sought after towns to live in Tokyo. Kichijoji has been named numerous times as the most popular city in Tokyo and we went to investigate why.
It was lucky that it was a beautiful day and so We started off in Inokashira park, one of the main attractions of the town.
Since it was a holiday we encountered many families, couples enjoying the holiday and people walking their dogs.

We found a spot under some trees with a nice view of the lake and started our picnic.


Inokashira Park


Picnic time!!


We were getting attacked by a few caterpillars during the picnic!

The park is quite long and there is a nice pond in the middle making it
a great place to have a nice walk,a picnic or enjoy a boat ride with
your girlfriend or family. The park is also home to a small zoo with
some local Japanese animals a shrine


A view of the beautiful pond in the park



After the picnic we went around the park and visited the park's shrine
which is dedicated to a vengeful goddess of love. There is a myth that
any couples which take a bot in the pond will be broken up soon after.
To avoid this, the couple come to the shrine before having their
romantic boat ride.


Swan boats! How romantic!!


The shrine and its Jealous Goddess


A view of the pond from the shrine

Every weekend and holidays there is a art market, where musicians perform and art vendors so we were lucky to see many things on that day ranging from strange instruments to paintings of all kind.

















The park is so big and there so were many things to see that we for got what time it was and we didn't have a chance to visit the zoo as we planned.
Later we went to check out the small shopping district called Harmonica Yokocho.



The name comes from the shape of a that the small streets make together to form the district look similar to a harmonica . This shopping district that has over 100 little stores crammed together side by side or across from each other used to be a black market after the war, and it has been left like it is since that time.




Unfortunately, many of the shops were closed due to the holiday so we didn't get the full experience that Harmonica Yokocho had to offer.







Harmonica Yokocho is buried in the new malls of Kichijoji, so it is an interesting mix of old style shops and new shops and department stores.


The Shopping  side of Kichijoji.

All in all Kichijoji is an amazing town. It has everything one might want without having to leave the town itself, with lots of places to shop, a place to spend a relaxing day and a mixture of new and old, its no wonder people wish to live in this town, myself included !