Shioiri Park is a hot topic when the Sky Tree looks beautiful. It will be held for the first time in four years after overcoming Corona. No matter how many times it is canceled, the Sky Tree with the lighting of the "phoenix" that will be revived again was shining.

Found a nice little restaurant in Nishi-Nippori over the weekend. The place was called Soba Saien Tsuruya (そば菜園つるや). I ended up ordering a nice katsudon set with some tasty miso soup. It's a nice little restaurant to visit if you're in the area. The owner seemed like a really nice guy and was quite friendly when he took my order.

Wanted to post this earlier this week, but better late than never I suppose. Was walking around Arakawa and they were having a rose festival sort of event it seemed like. Over by Arakawa Amusement Park there was a little area set up with some stalls. I didn't get to check it out but it seemed like there were a lot of people there. The amusement park was also open. I don't think I've seen it open for a while so it was nice to see people are able to visit it again. When I was passing the Arakawa tram I noticed there were tons of roses along the sides of the track that I'd never noticed before so I decided to snap this photo of the pink tram passing by with them.

Was nice weather over the weekend so I did a little exploring. Found this nice little temple near the Sumida River called Hozoin Temple (寳蔵院) in Arakawa. I wasn't sure where exactly I was allowed to go inside the temple, and I didn't have much time anyways, so I just took a peak through the gates and snapped a photo. It was a really quaint place and apparently it has some landscape paintings and itabi tablets. From what I saw, it looked like there was a garden across the ground. Maybe a rock garden or something of the sort, I wasn't able to get a good look at it though. The area around the temple was the hunting grounds of the Tokugawa Shogunate as well it seems. Pretty amazing to imagine there was enough greenery in the area to hunt in the past. Also managed to stop by a nice udon/soba restaurant for lunch. It was called Sunaba (砂場) I believe. I ordered the kamo (duck) nanban udon and it tasted great. Haven't had duck in a while, but it's always a treat. The lady taking orders was really nice as well. Overall a great place!

Decided to donate some clothes I wasn't wearing anymore over the weekend so I decided to go to the Second Street in Minami-Senju. Managed to find some cool stuff along the way. I was walking from Minowabashi and saw this nice looking temple, apparently called Koshunin (公春院). It was a really lovely spot and I would have liked to take more photos but I had some luggage with me and also wanted to avoid taking any photos of the tombstones as I thought it might be rude. It seems the temple focus on memorial services though and looked like a nice place. The next spot I came across was just a really small shrine that seemed so randomly placed that I wanted to take a picture of it. There wasn't much space inside the shrine are so it was quite difficult to get a decent photo, but I did the best that I could and tried to take a photo from the side street next to it which was also incredibly narrow lol. The last thing I ended up finding was a statue of Matsuo Basho! I'd not been to Minami-Senju as I've never really had a reason to go there, but I saw the statue from the corner of my eye and thought "Hmm I wonder if that's Basho" and sure enough it was. It even has "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (奥の細道) written below it. Also, apparently there is debate about which "Senju" he started at (Adachi or Arakawa), so this is one of the statues depicting the place where he started his journey! It ended up being a pretty interesting walk. I'd like to visit the area again as there was a ton of cool stuff.

Was walking past a park in Arakawa the other day and came across this interesting statue. I think the name is read as Honda Takatomo (本田 貴侶) but it was difficult to find any information. I kept finding stuff showing the same statue but instead of "聖なるもののリピドー" they all show "聖なるもののリビドー" I'm not sure what the differences are though. Perhaps there are multiple statues in different locations? All the ones I saw referred to this statue in Arakawa though so maybe there's a misprint or something? Also I'm not sure what "リピドー" or "リビドー" means, but if anyone has any idea about what the statue's meaning is I'd love to hear it! Either way it's a nice looking statue. I always enjoy finding things like this around different parts of Japan, they really add to the atmosphere of the city.

Went to a restaurant called "Taraku" (寿司たらく尾久駅前店) near Oku Station that I've passed many times. It's name says it's the Oku Station branch so I suppose it must be a chain restaurant, not sure how many there are though. The place was quite nice and they had single-person counter seats as well as table seats. The tempura set meal was ~1000 yen and again I got another discount using the PayPay app so it only cost me about ~700 yen. It's a pretty nice place though and they seem to have a bunch of different set meals as well as seafood bowls and other stuff like that. Definitely a place to drop by if you're in the mood for sushi, tempura, or whatever kind of sushi you're thinking of. They have a lot of takeout items as well and I think they do delivery as well, so they're probably on the Uber Eats and Menu apps as well but I haven't given them a look yet. The potato salad and miso soup tasted great as well. Tsukemono is always good so there was no difference here either lol. Everything tasted great. Definitely recommend checking it out!

Cool photo, this reminds me of the street car in Arakawa and the one in Hakodate as well. I didn't realize there was so few street cars left in Japan until recently. I saw somewhere about someone hyping up riding the street car in Arakawa and having ridden it several times myself I was kind of surprised I'd never realized that it's not very common in Japan anymore. I know there's the one in Enoshima as well but unfortunately I didn't learn about it until I'd already traveled there so I'll need to go back again so I can catch a ride under it. There's more stuff I want to do around the island anyways and there's a ton of great places to grab some food as well. This streetcar has some interesting designs on it though, can't make out what they are unfortunately but it looks nice. I'd like to go for a ride on it and I need to visit Nagasaki anyways so I guess it works out!