Shu Kuge draws our Tokyo balcony garden, now online and for sale in print

My husband Shu Kuge‘s 8 page comic about our Tokyo balcony just got published. I am thrilled that our tiny garden measuring 1 by 5 meters, often featured in this blog, inspired Shu’s story about life in Tokyo today.  Shu’s creativity and perspective always amaze me. The inimitable drawer Luis Mendo invited Shu to participate in a special issue of architecture magazine MAS Context devoted to Tokyo and illustrators. It was Luis who suggested using our balcony as the focus of Shu’s story.

You can see the whole comic online. www.mascontext.com/issues/24-tokyo-winter-14/shu-kuge/

Print copies can be found at Chicago Design Museum in Chicago, IL | www.chidm.com, and Avril 50 in Philadelphia, PA | www.avril50.com, and soon online at www.mascontext.com/purchase/

First article about Tokyo Green Space in Chinese: 東京都市學，衝突新美學

ペイユン・リンさんのおかげで、初めてTokyo Green Spaceについての中国語の記事が出ました。『Green』は台湾の建築関係の雑誌です。記事の題名は、「東京都市學，衝突新美學」です。

Thanks to Peiyun Lin, an article about Tokyo Green Space appears in this month’s Green magazine, a Taiwanese architecture magazine. The title is “東京都市學，衝突新美學,” which the author translates as Tokyo Green Space: The City Full of Conflicts. The photos are mine, and Peiyun’s story based on this blog.

Personal essay relates how my creative Tokyo neighbors inspire my balcony gardening

中野と新宿の近所の庭について、「The Plant」というスペインの雑誌に記事を書きました。インタビューと記事で、庭を作る個人的な理由を考えます。残念ですが、今のところ、記事は英語だけです。

Around this time last year I worked with film photographer Daisuke Hamada on a long article about flower pot gardens in Tokyo for The Plant, a semi-annual magazine from Spain. The article combines a personal essay about the pleasure of urban gardening and includes two interviews with my Nakano neighbors who have created public beauty with very limited space and budgets.  Some blog readers have asked for a copy, so I am attaching a PDF scan here (3 MB).

Shared Beauty: Tokyo’s Pot Gardens. The Plant, Issue #3. Fall, 2012.

Nice interview in Japanese government’s magazine

I was pleased to be interviewed in October’s Tokyo-focused issue of Highlighting Japan. You can read “Tokyo in All Its Greenery” here.

東京ローカルフルーツについて記事がGreenz Japanにでました

@a_small_lab と @jessmantell と一緒に、Greenz Japan で東京ローカルフルーツの研究の話をしました。@SayakaFelixさんのおかげで、持続可能性に興味を持っている日本人の方たちと会話ができます。

@a_small_lab, @jessmantell, and I spoke with Greenz Japan about our research on Tokyo Local Fruit. I was glad to see our ideas, images, and preliminary research results published in Japanese. Greenz is an online magazine and community focused on sustainability in Japan.

Flower wall house, from street to roof, brightens a bare spot in Nakano

最初のフィルムに、一番好きな中野と新宿の庭の写真をとりました。飯島さんの花の壁はとても素敵です。Plant Journal という雑誌の記事に、インタビューをしました。訪ねたときに、飯島さんは、「今、何も咲いていません」と言っていました。フィルムなので、イメージが古く見えますね。

For my first roll of film, I took photos of my favorite gardens in Nakano and Shinjuku, plus my own balcony garden. In the foreground above is Iijima-san’s flower wall house. He has 500 hundred potted plants, mostly flowers, rising from the street to the roof. I interviewed Iijima-san for the Plant Journal article I wrote recently.

His first sentence in greeting us was, “There’s nothing blooming now.”

It’s funny how using a film camera makes the image itself look older. The texture and colors in this image seem so different than the bright and flat images I am now accustomed to seeing with digital images. In the next days, I’ll put up more images from this first roll.

Lotus 149 publishes my photos of urban rice farming in Tokyo

「Lotus』というイタリアの雑誌に私の東京の農園の写真が二つでました。パソナのロビーの田んぼと銀座農園の空き地の田んぼの写真が選ばれました。「Lotus』には素敵な建築のプロジェクットがたくさんのっています。四角いかたちです。もっと東京のグリーンスペースを雑誌に紹介したいです。

Lotus Editorial kindly sent me a copy of Lotus 149, titled Lotus in the Field, which explores the relations with the countryside. Lotus is a beautifully designed, Italian-English bilingual architecture quarterly from Milan.

Lotus 149 includes two of my urban agriculture photographs: one of Pasona’s corporate lobby rice field, the other an outdoor, temporary rice field in Ginza that took advantage of an empty lot between demolition and new construction.

I was happy to see that my Pasona photograph extends into a second page, and I like how the image shows a more ambivalent side of the project than the text and photos provided by the architects and corporation. Especially with the post-3.11 energy shortages after the nuke plants have been suspended, creating a show garden with grow lights looks less than utopian.

You can see the original 2009 and 2010 posts on Tokyo Green Space that inspired Lotus 149: about Pasona, and about Ginza Farm.

Interviewing neighbors for Plant Journal article about flower pot gardens

バルセロナの「plant journal」という雑誌が東京の植木鉢の庭について記事を聞きました。浜田大輔さんはフィルム写真を撮りました。近所の庭師たちをインタビューをして、楽しかったです。

Barcelona-based Plant Journal invited me to write an article about Tokyo flower pot gardeners, and arranged for Daisuke HAMADA to take film photos of the gardens I selected in Nakano and Shinjuku. I interviewed two older gentlemen whose gardens I’ve long admired.

Hamada-san’s fantastic photos inspired me to buy a film camera, and in a few weeks I’ll start posting from my first roll. I think it’s been nearly twenty years since I had a film camera.

Boat and biking on Oshima with Paper Sky

伊豆の大島は東京の品川区だと知っていますか。浜松町から船で８時間かかりました。Paper Sky Bicycle Club のツール・ド・オオシマはとても楽しかったです。黒溶岩の砂漠での日の出も優しい自転車おたくたちもローカル料理もすばらしかった。Paper Sky は素敵な雑誌で、ニーハイメディアという出版社は最近自転車、山のハイキング、料理本のグループを打ち上げました。実際に人を集めるのはすごいと思います。

DId you know that Oshima island, off the coast of Izu, is part of Shinagawa ward? From the pier near Hamamatsucho, it’s an eight hour overnight ride on a slow and rather large boat. I recently went with Paper Sky’s Bicycle Club.

Highlights included watching the sun rise at black lava rock “desert” atop the volcano, fun and fashionable cyclists in their twenties, thirties, and forties, the slow over-night boat ride, two onsens, a small port made from a volcanic crater. We saw the end of the camellia season, the blooming of Oshima cherry trees, and ate ashitaba leaf vegetable. Dai dai cocktails cmobined local citrus with booze.

I am now even more impressed with Paper Sky, which is a travel magazine and also the hub of mountain climbing, food, book, and bicycle clubs. My fellow travelers were an interesting mix of bicycle sellers, magazine editors, serious and hobby cyclists, photographers, and creative types. I was surprised that the rental bikes were all Bruno bikes, which have small tires, great colors, and are excellent for city biking and mid-range touring.

With its real world events and groups, Paper Sky’s publisher, Knee High Media, is clearly thinking about a new type of publishing beyond paper, the web, and smart phones.

The Butterfly in the Metro

Metropolis magazine published my essay, “The Butterfly in the Metro,” that presents my impressions about the difference between public space in Japan and the United States. What is the role of shared spaces in urban life?

What makes a city desirable? After living in Tokyo for just two years, I realize that what passes as normal in a large US city now seems peculiar, unnecessary and even unpleasant.

. . .

Please read the full article on the Metropolis website. I am grateful to Eparama Tuibenau for the lovely illustration above.

Asia! online magazine publishes miso-making article

Asia! online magazine published my article about miso-making at my relatives’ Shiho ceramic studio in Tokyo.

Metropolis article on Tokyo Green Space

Metropolis magazine in Japan published my article on Tokyo Green Space. It’s my first general interest article on some of the amazing green space innovators I have met during my research in Tokyo: including Ginza rice farmers and bee keepers, a modern bonsai