Setting sun as big as Mount Fuji

たまに家の事務所からすばらしい景色が見えることに気がつきます。富士山の夕焼けはいい年末の写真だと思います。良い年をお迎えください。

Sometimes I am aware that my home office has a sublime view.

Residential street with pink camellia at night

Tokyo’s back streets can be incredibly quiet. I was struck by this huge pink camellia growing out of a “yard” less than half a meter wide. Tokyo gardens make use of the tiniest spaces with maximum public benefit. Most of this shrub’s canopy is over the street. Tokyo mixes the prosaic and the sublime.

Cherry tree + futon airing = spring

Urban nature has a beauty that is amplified by its proximity to quotidian activities. This late blooming, pom-pom cherry is in the final stage of blooming. Behind it is a 1970s apartment building with futons and bedding hung outside the window to air out. It finally feels like spring this week. It is this unlikely combination of temporality and permanence, beauty and function, people and plants, the sublime and the ordinary that make Tokyo such a lovely place to live.