Today we visited the Imperial Palace East Garden of Edo as well as learned Calligraphy with a world renowned artist of Japan.

Firstly, I have to say that the walls of the Imperial Palace are very reminiscent of the walls of Sacsayhuamán in Peru.  I visited there again last year with my Shaman John for a private audience with Don Pepito (his nickname) and was able to visit this powerful place again.  It never ceases to amaze me the power and skill of accomplished humans!

The amount of guard gates that the untrusted Daimyo (Lords) would have had to go through to actually obtain entrance to the palace (past Ninjas – YES REAL NINJAS – 100 of them – guarded the castle gates at the 3rd gate – you know the first two were just Samurai (gate #1) and basically the Edo Navy Seals (gate #2) – NINJAS – PS – the Shogun was awesome – need I say more!) was crazy! Check it out:

Gate #1

the “100 Ninja” guard house – um yeah, NINJAS!!

A lovely day in a lovely garden.  I was literally imagining what it would be like to be a court lady roaming the grounds with all the flowers in bloom and enjoying the gorgeous day!

So, from here we went to our calligraphy lesson. (Do you see the size of that brush in the foreground!  That thing weighed a TON! made from the tail hair of (2) horses! (The horses are safe – no worries!)

I will let you watch for yourself! (Kind of long, so speed it up!)

Learn about the tools of Calligraphy

Watch Shauna paint a Tiger (Tara Tara)

You can also see that they gave us our names in Calligraphy (here is a photo of mine – and I have to love it!  Unending Prosperity is what the symbols mean! YAY! 🙂