Let's go and see the thrtles ! (16)
(Kiyosumi Garden (Tokyo)

We went to enjoy turtles in "kiyosumi Garden", Japanese garden in Tokyo hearing the cicada drizzle on a hot day of the midsummer (August 2009)

A lot of turtles gather one after another when we scatter them food. Some of them try to eat from our hand directly. (Right)They try to eat food that dropped on rock. (August 2009)

Soft-shelled turtles also appear with red-eared sliders and reeves turtles. They are so friendly that they can approach to eat food from our hands directly when we scatter food here, though the soft-shelled turtle must be very cowardly. They are participating in the battle for food bravely without being defeated at even red-eared sliders. (August 2009)

A red-eared slider (left) and a reeves turtle (right) are basking on the rock. It's contrasted spectacle to spectacle that a lot of turtles scramble for food. It's a very peaceful sight. (August 2009)

Next we visited Fukagawa Fudo temple after leaving the garden. There is a stone monument written"Stone monument for holding a service of turtles and carps" on it back of the washing-water place of this temple like this. It seems to have some legends. Those outlines seem to be as follows roughly. "There was a pond where the turtle and the carp were here before and it was buried later. But some misfortune had happened after then. So people thought that it must be curse caused by carps and turtles and they built it to comfort their souls. (August 2009)

There are a lot of Japan-like shops with nice emotion around this temple. Especially we see often Japanese rice cracker shops. We bought the souvenir of the stroll for seeing turtles in one of them. They are two kinds of turtle-shape rice crackers. (August 2009)