These red flowers nearly blocked the path as we stumbled out of a restaurant one night this weekend. I love the thick flowers and sheer exuberance. I am not sure whether it’s a vine or a tree, and welcome any reader suggestions of its name in Japanese or Latin. The humidity in August is overwhelming, so it’s nice to be surprised by night-time plants.
この盆栽の葉を見たとき、うれしかった。もう死んじゃったかと思いました。
I have lost a number of bonsai over the past two years. It was a pleasant surprise to see these little leaves appear. I need to replace the moss.
In my apartment building’s enormous recycling and garbage area, I found this lovely image of Mount Fuji staring at me. Only in Japan do residents neatly fold and lovingly display used items destined for shredding and recycling. This image is not of the artistic quality of Hiroshige (広重)’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji, it’s a lovely reminder of nature in an unlikely place.
Riding the BART, the San Francisco Bay Area transit line, I was surprised to see this ad for mace, with the offer to get a 30% discount by typing in BART during the online check-out.
The idea that you can use a powerful chemical irritant to create a four meter wide personal space in public seems laughable in a dense city like Tokyo. Here, you can wear a face mask and maybe get a few extra centimeters of personal space as people may be afraid of influenza. To get 4 meters of space, you would have to smell very bad.
Are there other ways to feel safe in public? In the US, is it really OK to use mace when you are not being attacked and just want some extra breathing room?
I have always loved shade-tolerant, fall flowering Japanese anemone. As soon as it started to get cold, I bought a white one for my balcony garden, and placed it inside one of my hand-made, ceramic flower pots.
I was surprised when a local flower shop owner told me the name in Japanese: shumeikiku (シュウメイキク, or 秋明菊). She insisted that it is, in fact, not an anemone. For Japanese, “anemone” flowers in spring and early summer, and it seems to be in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae.
This naming confusion is quite common with flowers and plants.What we call Japanese maple, the Japanese call momiji (モミジ). Often the English name covers what for Japanese is several different flowers; a good example is azalea.
The funniest thing about the “Japanese anemone” name is that it is both relatively recent and a European hybrid of a Chinese cultivar. I love the national origin confusion, and the fact that this gorgeous plant is man-made.
Tokyo has had a strange April. Last Friday there was hail. I was surprised to hear a squishy sound beneath my shoes. Will winter never end? Fortunately, it is now a bit warmer, and I managed to pot up all the small plants I bought for my balcony garden: columbine, two types of jasmine, some yellow button flowers, a clover, and a small purple green vine.
The cherry blossoms ended suddenly with the rain and wind: briefly, the trees are redder as just the flower stems remain, and then suddenly the trees start leafing out. As soon as cherry blossoms pass, dogwood opens up.
Tokyo has a lot of dogwood trees, which come from the mid-Atlantic of the United States. The tree represents a cultural exchange between nations, with Japan providing Washington D.C. with monumental cherry trees, and the United States offering Japan dogwood. It’s strange that many Tokyo residents do not know the origin or significance of dogwood trees. They remind me of my childhood in Baltimore.
Tokyo Green Space 