An Autumn Stroll Through Verny Park

The blooming season here is fantastically long. There might be a stretch of three or four days between Christmas and the new year when pine trees take precedence, but otherwise there's always a flower or two offering bright splashes in the landscape.

Californians might take this perpetual color for granted, but a girl from Michigan enroute from the Navy base to the JR train station stops dead in her tracks when she spots floral abundance in mid-November.  And a girl from "The Rose City" can't help but gawk at Verny Park roses re-blooming just two weeks before Thanksgiving.  Back home we'd be begging someone to rub linament on our aching back after a day of raking leaves around about now.

"Reach for the sky, Pardner!"

A typically cloudless day

How fortunate that my camera was in my purse, and actually charged for once, and that I wasn't in a hurry the last time I had a JR train to catch.

Mitsuike Park: More Than Cherry Blossoms

While uploading my Mitsuike Park hanami pictures from Thursday and Sunday, I found as many pictures of children as of cherry blossoms. Here is my pictorial evidence that Yokohama parents are not very concerned about air-borne radiation.

A Preschool Field Trip on Thursday

A baseball game on Sunday

The playground on Sunday.  That's a very long slide on the right.

A better shot of the slide

The top of the slide

Feeding the fish

The wide slide on Thursday

The wide slide on Sunday

A badminton date

If I could do this, I could use a Japanese toilet

This kid has a remarkable throwing arm. 

The path around the pond is measured for runners.

Hanami at Mitsuike Park

Mitsuike Park is located in Yokohama's Tsurumi Ward. It's about a forty-minute walk from the Tsurimi JR station if you turn left rather than right at the top of the first mountain range.  But if Bossy Pied Piper is holding the map, you can count on spending at least an hour wandering over hill and dale.

Four kind strangers merit thanks for steering us in the right direction:  an elderly gentleman walking his dog, a perky young lady out for a stroll, and two middle-aged ladies who let us follow them.  While Bossy might have trouble reading a map now and then, she has a good eye for picking out polite and helpful Japanese citizens.  This is probably because every Japanese citizen is polite and helpful.

Weather and Sunshine never, ever complain when I march them three miles in the wrong direction.  This time their reward was a stop at Takano Fruit Parlor for chocolate parfaits on the way back to Yokosuka.  My children should take note of this "Never Complain = Chocolate Parfait" scenario.



The park has three entrances. I'm fairly certain we approached the park from the west but I'm not willing to swear this on a stack of Bibles since Japanese maps are not always oriented with north at the top. The park is located in a valley and I know for certain that we entered from above. Those nice middle-aged ladies pointed us toward the upper path and then hightailed it down steep steps to the lower level, leaving us to our own devices. We took their advice.

When I returned to the park with Ishii-san three days later, I learned two things: Mitsuike means "three ponds" and a ten-minute bus ride from the train station to the park costs 210 yen. The ponds are girded with paths and there are lots of other paths at higher elevations.  The park is enormous. 

A view from a lower path

The hanami crowd on Thursday was about one-tenth the size of the Sunday crowd and tended toward artists, photographers, and dog-walkers.  Weather and Sunshine took hundreds of pictures of cherry blossoms.  Bossy took hundreds of pictures of artists, photographers, and dog-walkers. 

A professional photo shoot under a weeping cherry tree

My favorite photographer

Counting Down to Sakura Fubuki

Pardon me for keeping you hanging. Those cherry blossoms in seemingly infinite varieties have been occupying my days and getting to the last page of A Girl in a Blue Dress before the Japanese Book Club meets tomorrow has occupied my evenings.

Tomorrow or the next day I'll start sorting the scores of photographs Weather Explorer and I snapped at Mitsuike Park last Thursday.  Mitsuike Park was one of Yokohama's best kept secrets until I saw it mentioned on a cherry blossom website a few weeks back.  The helpful clerks at the tourist information center in Yokohama Station were speechless when we poked our heads in the door in search of directions to the park but they rallied and came up with a Japanese map that gave us a vague idea of how to get there.  Prepare yourself for a long story; I was so smitten with the park that I went back three days later with Ishii-san in tow.

There's little chance I'll get all my favorite cherry blossom pictures posted before sakura fubuki time. That's the Japanese expression for "cherry blossom storm" when the petals cascade from the trees with every gentle puff of wind.

As a bit of respite for your eyes before I barrage you with more pink, pink, pink, here are two more pictures I admired at the Sogenkai Exhibit last week.

The Ancient Mariner puttered into port Monday in time to experience a few significant aftershocks. He's admired the new kitchen faucet and refrigerator and is starting to wonder when I plan to replace the owner's manual in the latter with something edible. Hopefully I'll get around to that before he vanishes over the horizon again less than two weeks from now.

Hanami at Ueno Park: A Happy and Carefree Crowd

The Wednesday afternoon hanami crowd at Ueno Park was wonderfully boisterous. We saw so many interesting and happy people strolling under a cherry blossom canopy, and even more people had pitched blankets on the cement verges. Definitely the place to be for the sake and whisky crowd. The Radiation Rebels headed back to Yokosuka before the sun went down but next spring I think we ought to bring blankets and sake and see what the blossoms look like when all those festive lanterns are lit.

Cherry blossom canopy

We paused near the park entrance to hear this quartet perform what we think was a selection from an Italian opera. The young man taking a bow has an amazing voice and was wearing perfectly round black glasses that made him look like a cross between Waldo and Harry Potter (the book rather than movie version).

This is Sunshine's first spring in Japan. She was not going pass up an opportunity to pose with a wrestler-in-training.

Photo credit today belongs to Weather who graciously shared all her Ueno Park pictures after my camera battery expired halfway across Shinjuku Gyoen. She let me take this picture with her fancy camera.

The picnic crowd on the verge, literally and figuratively perhaps

Two cats snoozing in a cherry tree

A young family exiting the Science Museum

Cherry Blossoms in Downtown Tokyo (#4)

Tokyo Midtown Tower was built on the land where Japan's military headquarters - think Pentagon - stood less than a decade ago. The developers, bless their hearts, set aside ten acres of that land for a park. It boggles my mind that this urban oasis is just three years old. Takako decided we ought to stroll through the park before visiting her painting at the art museum.


There are several varnished wood boxes dotted across the landscape between the skyscraper and the path leading to the park. Takako lifted the lid off one of the boxes so we could peek inside. "These are whirlpool baths. The water is turned on in warm weather so people can soak their aching feet." I file this away for future reference.



The park also offers public art, a playground, an open field, and a traditional Japanese garden with a shaded seating area.




And in Japan of course no park is complete without cherry trees.

Exploring Sumida City: Kate's Last Day in Japan

Most, and maybe all, train stations here have lockers of various sizes and corresponding prices where you can stash stuff you don't want to carry around all day. We gained at least an hour of exploring time Wednesday by stowing Kate's big suitcase in Akihabara rather than backpedaling to the hotel on the way to the airport.

Our destination, Ryogoku, is across the Sumida River, a quick two stops from Akihabara. Which station exit is nearest the Edo-Tokyo Museum? The lobby map tells us the museum is just beyond the National Sumo Stadium (Ryogoku Kokugikan).

We spot this statue (left) just outside the station's east exit. The trail is getting warmer. We see the museum off to our right.

It takes only a minute or two to walk to the museum which, as it turns out, is closed for the New Year's holiday, Dec 30 - Jan 1. It was open yesterday but not today. We feel stupid for not remembering that all museums in Japan close during the holiday period. Then we get over our disappointment by reminding ourselves where we are: Tokyo, where interesting sights and experiences lurk just around most every corner. We simply have to choose a direction and start walking.

We see a three-story pagoda over the treetops and gravitate toward it along a brick path. The path leads us to Yokoami-cho Koen. Koen is the Japanese word for park.

Tokyo -- I learned this three days later -- bought this land from the army in 1922. The city was working on turning it into a park when the Great Kanto Earthquake struck in 1923. The park's role as a memorial space was ordained when tens of thousands of disaster victims were brought here.

We drift toward a monument designed by Kimio Tsuchiya called "Dwelling of Remembrance." This memorial to the victims of the Tokyo air raids of 1942-45 is also a monument to the pursuit of peace. A list of the victims of the firebombings was placed inside the monument when it was dedicated in March 2001. The flowers symbolize life. It is a restful place (as Matt and Katie illustrate here).

Lucky for us, a nearby plaque includes an English translation. "This monument was erected so that the memory of these air raids and their victims will not fade but live on to remind succeeding generations that today's peace and prosperity was built on the sacrifice of many precious lives. It embodies the profound hope that this peace will be everlasting."

The sandstone building just beyond "Dwelling of Remembrance" is the Tokyo-to Irei-do (Hall of Repose), built in 1930 to commemorate the victims of 1923's earthquake. The Hall was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in 1951, at which time the original purpose was expanded to include the air raid victims. Since Irei-do is closed today, we'll have to schedule another visit to Yokoami-cho Koen. What flowers do you suppose they plant in the spring? I can hardly wait to find out.

On the other side of the park we find a memorial dedicated to the children who died during the air raids. I think about my Japanese friends, especially Kyoko and Misa who were alive during World War II. I wonder if they have visited this park and stood where I am now standing. A profound feeling of sadness of the lives-not-lived variety washes over me and distracts me momentarily from dwelling on Katie's impending departure. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

With public art so abundant in Tokyo, I almost overlooked the lovely gates at the park's entrance. Perhaps it's just me, but gates like this seem to be whispering, "Frank Lloyd Wright was here." Anything is possible.

Since one of us tends to get a bit, well, peevish when forced to retrace her steps, we headed back to the station by a different route. More public art awaited us on the near side of the Edo-Tokyo Museum: a towering statue of a man, a priest or monk perhaps, who is gripping a riding crop or some sort of wand in his right fist and letting his left hand serve as a landing pad for a bird. The man is standing on a tall pedestal that's balanced on the back of an enormous tortoise (left).

Have we discovered a Buddhist version of St. Francis of Assisi? Further research is warranted.

Perhaps I have just written my own epitaph.

The Gates at Komabano Park

The Left Gate

The Right Gate

Komabano Park is near the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo's Komaba neighborhood. According to a plaque just outside the park, Komaba "used to be a vast field called Komabano and was used as grazing land since ancient times to Medieval Period. In the Edo Era, the area was used for the hawking ground. In the Meiji Period, the first military review was held here."

(We believe "hawking ground" refers to an area where a specific type of bird flies around in a sporting fashion rather than a communal spittoon.)

Aren't the park gates remarkable? They have me reconsidering my lifelong preference for picket fences. I like how they are similar yet different. How do they look when they are closed? I would feel so honored to to open these gates every morning and close them every evening (at least for a week, and maybe longer).

Another plaque near the park sketched out a trail to follow. Life doesn't get much better than this. Oh, wait a minute, life DOES get better than this because I've just spotted another plaque that mentions the Shoto-Komaba Gallery Walk is one of 23 historical walks in Tokyo.

Guess who has a new mission?