By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
Today is most significant day for me: it is my birthday. Yesterday we visited Shinjuku Central Park, where l learned that there is another recreational park known as the Shinjuko Gyoen National Garden, about 15-minute walk from Shinjuku Central Train Station.
The moment l heard this place, l felt some mysterious strong urge to visit this public ground. I told my wife that we should visit it also, to which she agreed but since it was already late in the afternoon and the garden closed at 4:30 pm, we decided to go there the next day — on my birthday. When we woke up this morning, the consciousness of this garden had apparently fled my wife as she was instead raring to go to her usual place of ecstasy (the place of my torment) — the shopping stores. But the mysterious urge in me to visit the Shinjuku Garden stayed, and stayed throbbing.
My wife, yielding to my wish, and l took an early walk on an arctic weather to Shinjuko Gyoen National Garden. Just as we passed the garden entrance l was robustly swamp with the awe of the powerful beauty and vastness of the garden. The garden sits on an area that perhaps equals 5 or more big golf courses size in the Philippines. This multi-golf-course-like vastness of the garden is spic and span that slightly slopes upward and downward that overwhelms your spirit with fascination and delight. What endlessly adds beauty to this ground expanse is the perfect symmetry of trees all over it, aptly interpersed with plants of different species.
As we walked through the different and long asphalted paths of the garden to explore and relish its entirety, the overwhelming serene and quiet ambiance of the garden (while breached at times by the enchanting chirping of birds and the shrilling of crows) inevitably cradle the spirit to repose.
Indeed, it calmed my spirit and made it feel inexplicable peace and elation. I took this feeling as a unique gift on my birthday, for never throughout my 79 birthdays l came to experience this exceptional birthday treat. The garden must have been God’s way of conveying to me the deep wisdom of His declaration that His creation of trees, plants and the ground of the earth was good, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31). I personally saw and felt His creation in all its glory in that garden even in its dried foliage that coated a coloration of light brown all over it that winter normally spawns on the lush greenery of our world.Yet this garden’s awesome beauty remained, like the native beauty of a woman that persists even if barren of the foliage of makeup. Just imagine how this place will become a sheer consummate beauty when its lush green and flowers radiate during the Japanese spectacular– the season of cherry blossom.
Japan’s nature not only captivates, it also surprises tourists. Last January 2, the whole day was very sunny, an excellent treat in Japan’s season of chilling icy weather this time of year. At about 7 pm, rains suddenly struck and some minutes later, snow rain fell on Shinjuku and neighboring cities, a phenomenon unusual or abnormal this period of the city. This incident triggered different reactions from tourists, some took it a downer, but we, tropical men and women, welcomed it in frenzy from excitement, chasing and catching the snowflakes like children or crazy. It was a bonus to our vacation. Last time we tried to seek and experience the excitement of snow by taking a special trip to far Sapporo by plane from Tokyo. This time the snow came to us in Shinjuku.
Japan’s winter weather in particular has special effects on me (and on you, too, l am sure). It gives me the urge and energy to romp around Tokyo and beyond. We took no less than 12,000 steps daily yet not feeling the tiredness or fatigue our tropical Philippines always brings on. You can imagine these multiple steps tremendous boost on our health and immune system. And so despite this bone piercing icy weather of Japan that induced leg workout, l felt the strength to make Tokyo my frolicking field, my advance age of 79 notwithstanding.
In food, Japan offers exotic and distinctively delicious food.
Japan is the land of pristine Wagyu, the highly marbled and expensive beef that is the present vogue and sensation of beef eater. Being so flavorful and tender kind of beef, we indulged in it for days. But there is one kind of beef that surpasses and more special than Wagyu beef not known to many, the Kobe Beef which we gorged on in a steak restaurant very near our hotel, the Kobe Beef Daia restaurant. It was an indescribably tasty and tender beef ritually grilled before us.
No other country can prepare raw fish, raw meat, and raw shellfish in sophisticated dishes better than Japan. You can see and eat these raw foods in their fullest gamut of varied rawness and exoticness in a sushi conveyor restaurant.
The Japanese cooked version of these foods is equally exceptional in taste. Their fresh fish sinigang version, for instance, utterly spellbinds the palate that 2 nights in a row we had to go back to the same restaurant to order the same sinigang (the restaurant dubbed it soup) for my dinner.
For the first time in Kobe Beef Daia, l got to taste raw cow’s meat prepared in the exact fashion of fish sashimi, Japanese restaurateurs call meat sashimi, a slice of tender cow’s raw meat overlaid on a small mound of rice and you get exactly the taste of a tender, luscious fish sashimi.
Widely bereft of streets lawlessness, honest and helpful people, mouth-watering exotic dishes supplemented by the eye-popping and palate-salivating super giant crabs, shrimps, clams and oysters of Japan all seldom found in any other countries, heavenly scenes of nature, shopping stores spread all over that offer only genuine items to lavish the delight of tourists, weather conducive to action and to good health, tourists-friendly-government policies, and many other tourists drawer marvels, are all supportive of my hypothesis that Japan will become the chief convergence of world tourists!
