Today is supposed to be the best day for viewing the cherry blossoms. So…this morning I hopped on my bike and headed to Aoyama cemetery, my favorite place for hanami (cherry blossom viewing). Things looked good but, I expect by the weekend it will be even better. I will be in Texas by then. I love this time of year! Here are the photos:
This is a shot I got outside the the Tokyo Temple. Hurray! No power lines,
Wow! When I got home today this is what greeted me in the lobby of our building.
Orchids this size are often seen outside of new businesses. They are sent to wish the owners success. I am not sure why we have five in our building. I am going to my neighbor, Ekuko, if she knows what they are for. Stay tuned…
Another popular location is Roppongi Hills is Robot park. The park consists of a huge stack of colorful robots that serves as a landmark and then a row of multicolored slides.
When you are meeting someone in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo they will say meet me at Hachiko. Hachiko is a famous statue of a dog. If meeting in Roppongi Hills they will say meet me under the spider or “kumo no shita de aimashou.”
The sculpture is the work of Louise Bourgeois. She was born in France in 1911 and moved to New York in 1938. The title of this work is Maman, meaning mother in French. She designed it as a tribute to her mother whom she says had all the best qualities of a spider—deliberate, clever, patient, dainty, neat and useful. The statue is made of bronze except for the marble eggs suspended under the spider’s belly. It is ten meters tall and weighs 11,000 kilograms.
I am not sure what this building is. It is just has a very unusual facade. It almost looks like a church. I couldn’t find a sign or anything that would indicate what it is. It’s just around the corner from the Storm Trooper from yesterday’s post.
This blog project to post is really helping me to see and appreciate more of what is around me. Today I decided to try looking up more and this is what I saw on my walk.
Storm Trooper?????
It’s not a great picture. Some of that has to do with the cloud cover and the rest is my camera. (This post-a-day project has also caused me to get a little frustrated with my camera.) Anyway, I have no idea why this life size storm trooper figure is standing in this window.
This it what I have been watching every afternoon between 5:30 and 6:00PM. The sumo tournament is in Osaka. I don’t get to watch it live again until May. I was asked to write an article on Sumo for the Shell expatriate magazine, Destinations. You can read it here (the link doesn’t go directly to the article for some reason, it starts on page 7).
This building looks like it is part of the building to the right, but its not. It’s a free standing building that has only one room on each floor. Because of it’s small size the large satellite dish on the top made me think it looks like they are expecting signals from space.
There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Everyone passing the hospital across the street looks up at the cherry trees surrounding it. The buds are almost ready to burst. The sakura blossoms signal a new beginning. It is time for a new school year. New university graduates traditionally begin work. Each year friends, family and colleagues gather under the trees to celebrate with food and drink, in many cases lots of drink.
This morning I walked to Aoyama Cemetery.
Aoyama Cemetery
Sakura trees
It is one of my favorite places in Tokyo to view the blooming sakura. I wanted to see what was happening there. All of the trees are on the verge of blooming, but there was only one “rogue” tree that actually had blooms on one of it’s lowest branches.
Early Bloomer
I hope to see them in full bloom before I leave for Texas next Wednesday.
Moleskine
My seminary students from Singapore and Tokyo will tell you that I am obsessed by little black notebooks. I always have one in my bag. They are perfect for taking notes or jotting down ideas. The other day I was in Kinokuniya (a really big bookshop) and noticed the MT-Deco (masking tape). I had seen it before, but was never sure what to do with it. The display included several books dedicated to using MT for crafts. I opted not to buy the books, they are in Japanese, and just browsed through them for ideas. I did buy several rolls of the cute tape.
Japanese Masking Tape
I decided to try some out on a couple of my notebooks. It took less than 5 minutes to do both of these.
MT Notebooks
I “googled” Japanese masking tape to see if I could find any ideas for using it. I was shocked to see how much some people in the US are selling it for…almost three times what I paid for it here in Tokyo. I’ll be looking for new ideas to use it, I have a few in mind.
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