After breakfast this morning, we decided to wander over to the Imperial Palace, simply because it was the closest obvious "attraction" to our hotel. It was a pleasant walk through clean streets and the beginning of the park that surrounds the palace. The weather was beautiful...a bit on the warm side, even, if you want to know the truth. (Do you?)
Initially, it didn't seem as if the public was being allowed onto the the grounds proper of the palace, but eventually we discovered the tents that were set up to greet people who were visiting on this particular day. We passed through 3 checkpoints of the most polite, yet thorough, security (bag check, wanding, and frisking) and eventually meandered up to a long row of tents. There, people were lining up to sign some document or other. We were reluctant at first, since all the signatures appeared to be in very nice calligraphic kanji, but the attendants were very encouraging, we stepped up signed with our sideways scratchty hancocks.
As it turns out, today is the Emperor and Empress's 50th anniversary. So, on today only, for a window of only about 6 hours, the people were given an opportunity to sign their names in order to wish the Emperor and Empress a happy 50th anniversary.
It doesn't sound like much, I know. But for some reason, after all the other neat stuff we saw and did today, when we stumbled back to the hotel room, we all remarked about the remarkable serendipity that allowed us to participate in such a simple, but unique, event. And we left our signatures to prove it.
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