Wild palm is allowed to grow in manicured landscape

日本庭園の剪定はカンペキです。東京体育館のような公共施設にもツツジが波の形にしてあって、木が高いプードルみたいです。ですから、そこで自然に生えたシュロを見て驚きました。ヤシは「外人」だから、大丈夫なのでしょうか。

Japanese garden maintenance is precise and skilled, even in public facilities. Because of this, I was all the more surprised and delighted to see a self-sown shuro palm disrupting this heavily manicured and idealized landscape behind the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. The azaleas on the slope are pruned to suggest waves, and the trees pruned as if they were posh poodles.

Maybe because it’s a palm tree, this intruder is allowed to thrive.

Fall foliage extended all the way to winter

秋は暖かかったので、紅葉は年末まで延長しました。去年の葉をまだ落としています。これは東京体育館の入り口から観た景色です。

Because fall remained warm in Tokyo, the fall foliage extended all the way to the end of the year. The last few leaves are dropping now. Here’s the view from entrance to the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium out towards Shinjuku Gyoen, the elevated freeway, and the Sendagaya station.

New year decorations

Above is a kadomatsu, or new year’s decoration that rests on the ground. These large ones are usually in front of businesses. This one is in front of one of my favorite Tokyo haunts: the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium constructed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and open to the public now in central Tokyo.

The materials are bamboo, pine, straw and red berries. I love the decorative rope flower and the splayed straw at the base. Below is the shimekazari hanging outside of our apartment door. Notice the folded paper and rice stalk. After the holiday, these plant-based new year’s symbols are  burned at shrines. So different than the un-ceremonial sidewalk dumping of US Christmas trees.

Happy new year! Best wishes for a bright new decade.