The land of cherry blossoms, definitely, even amid the devastation

It's undeniable that after commencing on the southern island of Okinawa, the cherry blossom front has now reached us in Tokyo. It was on the perfect day for outdoor activities- April 5 - that I walked around Ueno Park, following a visit on the previous day to Chidorigafuchi, a park along the Imperial Palace moat, for cherry blossom viewing or hanami.

Both, the most popular parks for hanami in Tokyo, these locations were where I would have taken overseas tourists as part of my sightseeing courses if had not been for the massive earthquake and tsumami that hit the Tohoku region in my country on March 11.

Although there were few foreign sightseers a large number of locals like me descended on the parks. In the Chidorigafuchi area including the Yasukuni Shrine, the cherry blossom festival has been cancelled and the municipal government has banned parties and food stands, and it has decided not to turn on the lights on the area at night- a measure of strict electoric austerity.

In Ueno Park the government seemed to be more generous; there were a lot of food stands and some small parties taking place under the cherry trees. But no one was drinking heavily or singing karaoke. The usual euphoria that is visible during this period was absent. With voluntary restraint, a fantastic attraction in addition to the cherry blossoms is a pair of panda bears in Ueno Zoo. The lovely animals, "Riri" and "Shinshin," sent by China two months ago were exhibited to the public on April 1. Thousands of kids and parents or grandparents have since queued at the gate of the zoo every day.

I took photos to post on my Facebook because I wanted to show them to my overseas friends who are saturated in the news words on Japan of disaster, devastation, radiation, evacuation and so on. Frankly, I'm not intelligent enough to know how harmful for my health the radiation exposure in Tokyo is because the stories are very complicated. Now the people like me have started to return to normal. It's time to end the panic and resume hanami.

Ueno Park

Ueno Zoo

Toshogu Shrine in Ueno Park

Chidorigafuchi Park

Yushima-Tenjin: a Mecca for students who sit for entrance exams

The entrance exam season is upon us again in Japan because the new school year begins in April, and many students who are about to take the tests and their parents visit Yushima Tenjin, a Shinto shrine, to ask for help in getting into the university of their choice. They write their wish or the names of the schools they want to enter on wooden votive tablets called Ema, which they receive after making an offering of 800 yen. When their wishes come true, the shrine recommends they should come again to receive another Ema for 800 yen and express their gratitude to the enshrined deity, Sugawarano Michizane.

Michizane was a scholar and politician in the 9th century. Due to his extraordinarily high intelligence and hard work he moved up the political ladder. However, he was demoted from the highest rank official in Kyoto, the capital, to minor post in a remote town as the result of his rival's scheme. Although he wasn’t successful as a politician and died unhappy he is revered by Japanese people as a great scholar.

On a chilly but sunny day in February I took my American guest Steve, who is a professor of law, to the shrine. He was amazed at the thousands of Emas, saying there no custom like that in his country. The garden was crowded with people who came and saw the hundreds of ume plum blossoms at the shrine which cultivate them because of Michizame’s favorite. Michizame composed a beautiful poem about the ume blossoms in his garden when he left Kyoto for the last time, never to return.

When the spring east wind blows,
Ume plum trees,
Don't forget to bloom with scent,
Even without your master



A lot of Emas




The annoucement: They passed the entrance exams!



 A tea ceremony in the garden

Michizane rode on a cow and left Kyoto

Yasukuni-jinjya, a controversial Shinto shrine in Kudanshita, Tokyo

  Every spring crowds of people go to the shrine to see the cherry blossoms and many have a party there -eating, drinking, and singing karaoke in the grounds. Cherry blossom viewing, or hanami, is one of the biggest events for Japanese people, and Yasukuni's area including Chidorigafuchi, a path that follows a section of the Imperial Palace moat, is the most popular in Tokyo for hanami. The sight of the cherry trees there is so breathtaking that the visitors may forget instantly about the issue of Yasukuni.

As the day the war ended, when August15 approaches the mass media pays attentions to whether the country's prime minister plans to visit the shrine to honor the war dead including war criminals, whose enshrinement arouses controversy. Junichiro Koizumi, who is now retired from politics, was the last prime minister to make a formal visit to Yasukuni. His visit about four years ago caused anger from the countries once invaded by Japan such as China, North and South Koreas, and Southeast Asian countries.

I have somewhat mixed feeling of the shrine because I went to high school near it and remember the noisy rightist propaganda cars driving near the shrine but also, of course, the beauty of the cherry blossoms.
 
Rarely did I get a chance to go there after graduating from my high school, but about a year ago I started to take my guests there because Yasukuni Shrine is a good place to learn about the Japanese tradition, culture and history. We can see the main hall of the shrine before an outdoor theater of Noho, a traditional stage performance, a Japanese garden, a sumo ring and sometimes ikebana flower arrangements. And the war memorial building called Yusyuukan exhibits cannons, a warplane, and other items related with the war.
 
In early December of last year Danny from the UK and I went around the shrine, fully enjoying its autumn colors. It was the first day of his first trip to Japan and the visit, I think, was a good introduction to my country.

The path lined with gingo trees leads to the main hall

The main hall of Yasukuni Shrine

Noho theater

Japanese garden

Happy New Year for 2011, the Year of the Rabbit

  The New Year's Day is the most significant day in Japan, equivalent to Christmas in other countries. People visit Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples, they return to their homes and feast on traditional New Year food, "osechi," and they send New Year’s cards to friends and relatives. There is no custom of exchanging their presents at Christmas, but it is customary to give money in a small envelope, “otoshidama" to their children, and young nephews and nieces. Just after New Year's Day toy shops and computer stores are said to be full of temporarily rich children.
　According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit, which is the fourth animal-the first animal is the Rat followed by the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and the last, the Pig. So, people in Japan will see a lot of depicting rabbits. And for people born in the Year of the Rabbit, they shall be the luckiest people this year. Tiger Woods may regain his previous stardom because he is a Rabbit like Albert Einstein, Pope Benedict, David Beckham and Brad Pitt. Positive thinkers predict that it being the year of the Rabbit will help Japan overcome the stagnation of the economy and low employment rates among other problems, saying, "we can jump over the difficulties and leap into a brighter future like rabbits." I also hope we can.

A shinto shrine near my house

A shrine celebrates the Year of the Rabbit

Rabbit ornaments in my house

A bowl of zoni, kuromane, datemaki, and namasu
typical new year food

New year's cards from my friends

Jindaiji Temple in Chofu, a city of western Tokyo

Soba restaurants along the street

Main hall of Jindaiji Temple

Some of my guests want to skip the highlights of Tokyo, such as the Imperial Palace, Asakusa Sensoji Temple and Meiji Shrine, and see local and interesting places their guide books don't cover. Jindaiji is almost the perfect place to go. My guests were very pleased with the temple and the area around it.
 The 1,200 year old Buddhist temple is 20 minutes by train and 15 minutes by bus away from Shinjuku, and is popular among pilgrims. After visiting the temple tourists often enjoy going to a Japanese soba noodle restaurant but this might be a problem. It's hard to decide which  restaurant go to because there are more than 20 along the street in front of the temple.
 It was a warm and lovely day on November 12 th when I arranged an excursion to show my guests, Heidi and Glenn from Perth, Australia, around Jindaiji. When I met them at their hotel, Glenn appeared wearing a colorful short-sleeved shirt and rubber sandals with bare feet, I smiled at him and asked him to at least put on a jacket.
 He took a lot of photos and Heidi wrote down on the name of the temple, perhaps to show and tell their five grownup children and friends. We really enjoyed the crimson leaves of autumn and, of course, hot soba noodles topped with two deep fried shrimp in a cozy traditional restaurant.

Its beautiful garden

The gods of bounty, Daikoku and Ebisu



Our soba restaurant



Hot soba with deep fried shrimps



Ikebana: the Japanese art of flower arrangement

  After seeing an ikebana exhibition at a department store in Tokyo I attended a class offered by Sogetsu, one of the major ikebana schools I learned for about seven years before.

 In a standard way, ikebana learners choose  two kinds of materials --flowers, branches leaves or grasses--for their works. Ikebana is often a very simple form of decoration and flowers are not the main material used, in marked contrast to the Western decorative art of flower arranging.  This is because ikebana originated as an offering to Buddha by the Buddhist monks. Eventually ikebana developed into an art.

 Sogetsu is a very modern and young school of ikebana, but Ikenobo, another major school,  has a long history and is a very authentic one. Ikenobo is a monk's name, which reminds us that the school was originally related to Buddhist monks.

 Apart from ikebana offered by religious people, ikebana is generally put on an alcove called a toknoma, in a Japanese-style room, and a hanging scroll is also typically put up. A half-sized tatami of tokonoma should be clean and tidy because it is believed to be a spiritual center of the house so a simple ikebana arrangement is preferable.
Although the ikebana works of the exhibition I saw this day were highly elaborate, the teacher's demonstration in the class was very simple but beautiful. I followed her style and have done one myself.

Choose two kinds of matreials




And then decide which vase you use

 

I've done it.







Ikebana and a scroll in tokonoma

Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa in western Tokyo

 About 5.5 million flowers, "autumn cherry blossoms （秋桜）"or cosmos, fully bloomed in Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa, western Tokyo on 24 th of October. It was chilly and cloudy Saturday but a large number of people like us came to see them. It took about 20 minutes on foot to go to Cosmos Hill from a main entrance of the park near Tachikawa Station. It's a huge park, about 40 times the size of Tokyo Dome Baseball Stadium, and its land was occupied by U.S. military.  Tachikawa, a once U.S. military base town, I found, has now changed to a modern residential one with department stores, restaurants, boutiques and the beautiful park, as well.
 After taking photos in Cosmos Hill my Spanish guest and I walked around Japanese Garden and playgrounds for children. She was very annoyed by the loud sound of airplanes and helicopters that flew over almost every hour, and asked me why. The sound made me realize that the base maybe still here.

Showa Kinen Park: http://www.showakinenpark.go.jp/english/index.htm

A sun clock



Cosmos Hill





Japanese Garden



A play ground full of kids