Dear Elliot, Emmala and Eliza,

Guess what? We saw turtles in Tokyo. We visited Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, which is a very large park filled with many flowers. There is a huge greenhouse in the park and there are formal Japanese Gardens as well as English Gardens with roses and other flowers. One of the areas of the park is especially for children, with a pond and plenty of turtles in the pond. We were thinking of you, Emmala, as we were taking pictures of the turtles.

Rachel really enjoyed all of the flowers. She was having a good time taking pictures of all of them with her camera. Grandpa has a special lens for taking close-up pictures and Rachel had a good time using the lens to take lots of pictures.

Mike was looking at all of the different trees. There are many different shapes of trees in the park. Some of the trees are very big. The park was once the private land of a family who kept much of it in a natural state. When the nation of Japan took over management of the park, they were careful to keep track of all of the trees and make sure that they have special care. Some of the trees are thousands of years old.

It was fun to have a stroll in the park after having had a very busy day yesterday. We have been doing a lot of walking. Yesterday we walked more than eight miles. Today we have walked more than six miles. We have also climbed lots of stairs. There are bridges for people to cross the busy streets, but one place we visited had many streets coming together in a huge intersection. When the light changed for people to cross, there were thousands crossing at once! It was amazing! We went upstairs in a Starbucks to watch all the people in the street below. We have fun every day.