Koganei park. This is the entrance I take to get in these days.
Mmm...Sunsets through sakura. This photo and the previous one were actually taken during the last blogs time window. I thought it was better to group these a bit together though.
The morning of the school's Hanami party. Just hanging on my tarp, watching the flowers.
It was a bit busy though...
Sean, towards the end of the party helping us get the tarps ready for transport.
Simon's difficult to locate cell phone store, Vertu.
Genki at the Imperial Palace.
A familiar view from an earlier week. Much better camera now though.
On our way to accidentally discovering awesomeness.
The Imperial Palace's moat.
Starting along the path...
See all the suits? This is Tokyo word, Tokyo city, Tokyo prefecture...
"Yeah, I just dig chilling with cheery blossoms."
The torii gate in front of the Yasu-Kuni shrine. This is reportedly the largest in Japan.
Just a nice shot of a crow...
The shrine itself. There's a good chance that some of these visitors are ultra-nationalists.
Old/New, Nature/Technology
The Yattei area that Melissa and I had dinner at.Liquid Shack
Week 46
And so it begins.
Perhaps the largest yearly festival in Japan.
Hanami.
Cherry Blossom viewing.
The very first indications of the cherry blossoms had begun popping up a few weeks ago. When Melissa's friend Toni was visiting we saw a few in Yoyogi park. But it wasn't until this week that they really came out with a vengeance. And man, was it ever beautiful to see. Kayoko and I spent a good bit of the week preparing for the school’s Hanami party that was to take place on the weekend. Around about this time the manager that had been working with us temporarily finished off her stint at the school. She was pretty cool. We had a final farewell with her in Kokubunji.
Thursday saw me running in the afternoon.
And that’s really unusual.
Some explanation required. I often have a fairly large break on Thursday afternoon, so I took the opportunity to walk back to my apartment, change into my jogging gear and tear it up through Koganei Park on an absolutely beautiful April day. It was really warm and, more than anything SUPER crowded.
The latter part of the previous statement also requiring further explanation.
My city, Koganei, is INCREDIBLY well renowned for its cherry blossoms. So much so that 30 or 40 years ago, the trains on the Chuo line would only stop in Koganei for two weeks out of the year. Those would be the two weeks of Hanami, when the cherry blossoms were blooming. This may not be so surprising when you consider that my house is on a street called Sakuramachi. That literally means Cherry road.
It follows therefore that the yearly Cherry Blossom festival is an absolute mad house. The close proximity to Tokyo and the quality of the sakura presentation creates the perfect typhoon. So Koganei gets a bit flooded, especially the park section of it.
And this all added up to a very interesting jog for me. I’m used to jogging at night with barely anyone else around during the coolest part of the 24 hour cycle. So yeah, it was a novel to be dodging around kids on bikes and huge numbers of people walking dogs. Not to mention the heat. That stuff wasn’t annoying at all.
Hmmm…sarcasm doesn’t really come through in print.
It all added up to a really exhausting jog that was partially fueled through a song recently recommended to me by Melissa, Flo Rida’s Right Round. I can’t really comment on the intelligence of the lyrics, but damn if music like that doesn’t help with running. He certainly throws together a good rhyme.
It was damn appropriate for the hectic surroundings of that particular run.
Other than that though, a fairly typical week. Sunday saw me up nice and early to partake in a wonderful Japanese tradition. Companies in Japan these days often send the newest members in an office to reserve the spot for the office Hanami party. In many cases this even means that they have to go and stay there overnight.
That was me this year. Minus the overnight bit.
Although, honestly, I think it was probably more due to me being the member of school staff that lived closest to the park, not my junior position.
So I was out nice and early sitting on my school’s tarp, snapping away at the cherry blossoms with my camera and awaiting the nice big group of students that was coming to hang out with us. The spot I picked was pretty good, in that it wasn’t too crowded but still had plenty of sakura trees around. The park was ridiculously busy though, so busy that in some places it was actually difficult to see the ground around the tarps placed down by picnicking families.
We had a pretty decent student turnout. About 20 people. Kayoko and I had also taken advantage of the newly opened Ito Yokada across the street from the school to pick up some authentic western food. Ie. Tortilla chips and salsa. Yeah, yeah, not exactly Canadian, but it’s a bit of a rarity in Japan. I don't think it was wildly popular with the students, but it was nice as something new for them to try. The rest of the afternoon was pretty great. Good conversation, seeing Sean again, tons of cherry blossoms. Does it cause some descriptive dissonance to call the afternoon badass? I mean, there weren’t any awesome guitar solos or anything…
But badass ‘twas.
Things broke up in the late afternoon and we all headed back to our respective places of residence.
Monday was pretty spectacular. I met Melissa in Ebisu early on in the day to go and take care of some medical concerns we had about our upcoming trip to Malaysia. Namely, Malaria and Typhoid.
This led us to the Tokyo British Clinic and a nice meeting with a doctor. He informed us that the risk of contracting either disease was quite low. As a precaution though, we both got Malaria shots at an absolutely exorbitant price, something in the area of $350. I’ll unfortunately have to go back and get the Typhoid shot later this summer for a trip that’s coming up in fall. This was actually kind of a surreal experience. I guess I know what Americans without health care feel like now.
“I’ll take the Malaria but hold the Typhoid.”
“If you buy both now you get a 10% discount…”
“Well…I’ll have to put it on layaway, but okay.”
After the Doctor’s, Melissa and I headed to Ginza for a second time. It was a lot cooler this time out, we wandered around and just took in the sights. I was on a mission to get a few pics for my friend Simon back in Canada of the Vertu store in Ginza. We didn’t actually know where the store was, so we had to wander a bit before we found it. I got some shots of the outside. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let me shoot inside the store. Guess that’s the curse of being an amateur.
Things then got really interesting. We decided to go to the Imperial Palace because Melissa hadn’t been there before and we were within easy walking distance.
The Palace itself was much like I remembered it. However, we stumbled along a path that runs alongside the moat of the Imperial Palace that is famous as one of the best places in Japan to see Cherry Blossoms. This discovery was completely by accident and COMPLETELY awesome. The path is positively enfolded in Cherry trees. This is bolstered by beautiful views across the moat of the palace walls bedecked with more cherry trees.
We followed the path for about 45 minutes, circling about half of the Palace compound before we split off and crossed the street and arrived at our originally intended destination.
The Yasu-Kuni shrine.
This is a really impressive, very beautiful shrine. Unfortunately it’s also quite infamous. The shrine itself is dedicated to the war dead of the Meiji Restoration. This was later expanded to include any soldier that died in service to the emperor in times of war.
So far so good.
Oh wait…except for a little blimp called World War 2. Japan unfortunately did some not so nice things on continental Asia. Since the shrine is dedicated to soldiers sacrificing themselves during war, a great number of combatant names were enshrined there after World War 2.
Which makes the shrine a public relations nightmare.
Every time a Prime Minister visits the temple China and Korea freak out and make claims about Japanese militarism and attempts to revise their history. Arguably, China and Korea aren’t being that alarmist. There are thousands of shrines in Japan. There’s no real reason why you would choose to go to the one shrine that will piss off the international community.
Conversely, should not Japan be allowed to mourn their dead as well?
It’s a sticky situation.
Anyways, political disaster aside, it is a really beautiful shrine, and was quite busy when we were there. We just kind of waltzed in and wandered around while I made cracks about damaging relations between Japan and its neighbours.
We only stayed for a short time before leaving the shrine to grab some festival food. Mmmm Yattei (food shacks at festivals). After that, it was out of Tokyo and off to Shimo-Kita-Zawa for more rock power with Ben and Co. We’ve actually started building a band in the game at this point. The Hair Blair Bunch will rock on forever! Great fun and a great week!
Sakura’d out
Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello
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