Day 2 and 3 - What you find when you go in a random direction

For my second day, I decided to just go in a random direction and see what I find.  I tend to have a pretty good sense of direction, so I really wasn't too worried about getting lost.  And it's pretty incredible what I found.

(Note in advance: Most of the following pictures were actually taken over 2 days.)

 I think this was a university? I just liked how the building looked.

And here's what I found as I was just walking up the street.  It's pretty incredible to be walking through modern Tokyo and suddenly run into this.

These statues were on either side leading up to the arch.

 I like this one because it has babies.

One of the various monuments that were in the park.

I think Alex (my friend who's more knowledgeable of Japanese than me) said that this is a spring of pure water that had something to do with a battle.  Hey, it's vague, but it's better than what you would've gotten with just me posting these pictures ("This looked cool")

Rocks.

More rocks behind the spring. These had something to do with spirits.

A bronze statue in the middle of the park.

And the plaque explaining the meaning of it.  This was literally the only English I saw on my first time through.

One of the huge doors in the gateway which lead from the park to a shrine.

The shrine itself.

On either side there were these display cases.  I'm not quite sure what to call what's in them. Dioramas, I guess?

A better shot of the other diorama.

A sign explaining about the peach blossom trees in the area. They weren't going to bloom until spring, so no pictures of the trees themselves.

Alex said these are good luck charms.

A stage at the shrine.

There was a museum at the shrine.  Didn't pay for the full tour, but the entry hall was free to look around, and there was plenty of impressive stuff like this Zero fighter.

The Zero's stationary machine gun.  Not much to say about the following pictures.

 

And back outside.  I wanted to get a nice shot of this building by the museum, mainly because of the symmetry.  Wave to Alex, everybody!

 Statues outside the museum. Again, not a whole lot to say about them.

This post is getting pretty long, so here's a break for the rest of the stuff we found.