After a slow start to the day we thought we'd better get out for a while, so we decided to go for a walk around the Imperial Palace gardens. My idea to get lunch in Otemachi first was a bad one: this is a business district and the Sunday streets were deserted and restaurants all closed. Eventually we found a building that was open and had a number of places to eat, though from the outside it just looked another office block.
By the time we emerged and went to the bridge over the moat it had clouded over and looked quite threatening. We had to employ umbrellas for a while and it reminded us of the day we were there almost exactly two years ago on our trip, when we caught the tail end of the rainy season and it rained torrentially for the whole day. The Palace is a great green heart in the centre of the city, though parts are off limits, reserved for the imperial family.
I don't think it is as nice as some of the parks but pleasant enough. We walked around for half an hour but I was being bitten a lot and Emily was grizzling with heat and tiredness.
After we'd put Emily to bed there was a beautiful sunset 
followed by a magnificent thunder storm to the north, with some awesome lightning bolts that seemed to last for seconds. There appeared to be a lot of building strikes. It caused such a strong wind to blow that we turned off the aircon and opened windows front and back to get a through-draught as it gets so stuffy after days of being cooped up. One gust was so strong that some of the hall doors slammed violently, yet Emily didn't stir.
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