The Natural and Cultural Gardens (Shizenbunkaen Park) features a magnificent natural setting, including the Japanese Garden, which boasts spectacular landscaping technique, woodlands, spacious lawn areas, ponds, streams, and more. The Japanese Garden conveys the mysterious beauty of Japanese culture and of Japanese landscaping technique, which has continued to evolve throughout the country's history. The Natural and Cultural Gardens (Shizenbunkaen Park), meanwhile, is encircled year-round with the flowers of the four seasons--cherry blossoms, tulips, cosmos, and more, as well as beautifully colored trees such as maples and ginkgos, all making for a wondrous natural setting to delight the visitor.

The Japanese Garden, consisting of 26 hectares of land provided to Expo '70 as a government exhibit, is a renowned garden of the Showa Period and a prime example of Japanese landscaping technique. Built alongside a stream that runs from west to east, four periods in the history of Japanese landscaping are represented here: the Heian Period (8th-11th centuries), the Kamakura and Muromachi Period (12th-16th centuries), the Edo Period (17th-19th centuries), and the present (20th century), creating a luxurious walking course where visitors lose track of time as they drink in the delicate beauty of the Japanese aesthetic. The garden design incorporates representations of the path of mankind--and the progression of time--using flowing water, and also strikes a perfect balance as a whole.

In addition to all this, the Garden is decorated with typical Japanese garden fixtures of snow lanterns and the tea houses Han-an, Banri-an. At Senri-an, the visitor can actually take tea. Seasonal blossoms such as lotuses and irises complete the scene, creating a magically appealing spot.

The cluster of pavilions of the Expo '70 event, built with the most advanced technology of the time, were intended to represent futuristic urban designs. Once the Expo '70 pavilions were taken down, a variety of trees and grasses were planted on the man-made site to create a self-sustaining forest.

Stretching over an area of some 99 hectares, the Park is densely planted to evoke the meadows, with the western section consisting of woodlands and hills--and the Tower of the Sun (Taiyo-no-to) in the center--and grasslands to the east. The entire area from the woodlands to the grasses is decorated with waterfalls and flowing streams, creating a nostalgic rural scene as the water flows through troughs and passes through a watermill.
The park is also a wondrous display of the four seasons, with trees and flowers bringing forth new shoots in spring, the cool breeze of summer waterfalls, the changing leaves and pampas grass of the autumn, and the sweet melancholy of winter as the park's plant life goes to sleep for the season. The forests are a magical display of the changes of the four seasons, complete with chirping birds and the wonderful aroma of flowers. Time passes slowly in the Natural and Cultural Gardens (Shizenbunkaen Park). The meadows of the park, which feature the Festival Plaza and Lawns, are host to a number of events, creating an urban atmosphere even as it is surrounded by greenery.