School girl uniforms match bullet train color scheme

夏は、たくさん修学旅行する学生を見かけます。東京駅で見たセーラー制服と新幹線の配色が似ています。

Summer is the season for school field trips. There seemed to be more than one hundred students on this field trip.

Girl in yellow dress uses a water can in Kabukicho graffiti

歌舞伎町に、面白い園芸に関する落書きを見つけました。女の子はじょうろからぽつぽつと水を注いでいます。黄色の手袋もブーツを持っていて、いかりの入れ墨を腕にして、電気ボルトのワンピースを着ています。

I love this horticultural graffiti on the Korea Town side of Kabukicho. A girl pours a few drops from a watering can. She’s wearing matching gloves and shoes, with an anchor tattoo on her arm and electricity bolts on her dress. I wonder what she’s growing.

Suntory Midorie

Recently I visited Suntory Midorie‘s showroom in Aoyama. The entrance vertical green wall with their company name was most impressive in terms of plant diversity and aesthetics. There are also about ten other designs showing the variety of looks they can create with wood frames and internal pump and watering system.

Suntory Midorie has created these indoor walls for offices, malls, cafes, airport lounges, and hair salons in Tokyo and Osaka. The systems use artificial planting material (half the weight of soil), hydroponic systems automated with pumps and timers, with water collecting at the base. The water drips from top to bottom once a week, and Suntory Midorie provides monthly maintenance to its corporate clients.

In addition to these framed walls, Suntory Midorie also makes a horizontal roof top system that’s been used by Mitsui on an office tower near the Imperial Palace to mitigate the heat island effect and lower air conditioning costs. Suntory Midorie has done some exterior green walls, for a cafe, a hotel pool area, and a group of Shibuya vending machines.

A miniature system of small indoor frames, with no mechanical system, is sold online for residences and marketed as something young girls might enjoy taking care of. Suntory Midorie was founded in March 2008, and became independent of  its beverage manufacturer parent company Suntory in April 2009.