“Can’t see the palace for the trees.”

The gardens within the grounds of Kyoto Imperial Palace are quite impressive, they feature Omiya Palace, Sento Palace, multiple shrines, a peach grove, and of course, Kyoto Imperial Palace. The peach grove is odd, the peaches are within arms reach, I can steal a few if want to, but don’t. The best looking shrine is the Isukushima Shrine; it sits quietly over a lake. There are signs in some areas of Kyoto Imperial Palace Park that say, “Not to be visited by tourists.” There are little to no other tourists here anyway; perhaps the signs have driven them all away. As I wander, I find that some of the paths are overgrown, others forgotten many years ago. I see one gardener delicately pollarding the branches of a tree. Just one gardener for a park 1.3 kilometres in length. As for the Kyoto Imperial Palace, it is behind a moat and a tall wall. The water in the moat has dried up. The wall too high to see the palace beyond. Even if the wall wasn’t there, the palace would be completely shrouded by trees anyway. There is one thing I do like though, and that is the sound made by the Cicadas. These little insects just love to sing. The trees here are full of them. And there are a lot of trees; ten thousand trees in the Palace Park alone. The noise these insects make sounds alien to me, maybe robotic; but calming. I spend a full hour wandering the park, and despite not being able to see the palace, I do enjoy the other little distractions the palace grounds have to offer.