The students have been in Tokyo only 3 weeks. It was an impressive experience to walk around from their Univ. Sophia neighborhood, Yotsuya to Niju-bashi(Imperial Palace) We had the tour with 6 groups depending on the Japanese language proficiency.
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The course covers actually the heart of our country from Edo period until now. We had a class briefing before start to explain historical background of these districts, such as “ KIOI(紀尾井)”
“Why was town given its name KIOI? “
To begin with we walked up to State Guest House, designated as the national treasure since from Dec. 2009.
This building looks like a copy of the European palace, originally built as a palace for the crown prince in Meiji .
Contrary, the old looking wooden Japanese gate still appears on east of the State guest House, which were the gate of the Kii Tokugawa family'smansionn.
The students were interested in taking photos such a neo-baroque style building very rare in Japan.
The
It is surprising the gate still now used as the east gate of the house
These districts are the former sites of Tokugawa branch families’ residences . The huge estates in Edo were mostly nowadays transformed to the beautiful garden, the prestigious hotels, or the government buildings.
One of those is Japanese Garden of the Hotel New Otani !
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We dropped in there and strolled in the beautiful garden. It’s amazing to find such an Oasis in the bustle of the City where we really feel to get stress free !!
In the garden, we enjoyed dry garden corner, pond with carps, fossil stone of tree root, waterfall, rare red stone from Sado Island, old trees, stone lanterns, etc.
All those were passed from Kiyomasa Kato, strong warrior in 16 C. into 
Ii-family→ the royal family→Otani(the founderof Hotel New Otani) over 4 centuries. Over the times passed from Edo to Meiji, the current of politics as well the life of citizens has been shifted from
the feudal society to the democratic one. We found the traces of incidents as assassinations happened in the Meiji restoration there.
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Leaving Kioi town, we walked up to Nagata-cho, the present core of the Government area and stopped by Parliamentary
Museum and the garden where dogwood trees just begun to bloom that were 
sent from US in return to a gift of thousands of Cherry blossom trees for Washington D.C. by Tokyo Mayor, Ozaki Yukio. This year is 100th anniversarry and the big festival took place in Potomak River side in Washington D.C. In this tour we watched the wild cherry blossom called Kanzan(関山) here and here.
Students enjoyed the first spring in Tokyo
On the street near the National Government Building, we met many school graduation trip students, junior high(？) from country side. They said hello with waving their hands to US students with smile. And then US students answered their hello by waving their hands too.
What a happy sight ? It is !!
by M. M.