ume matsuri

On Sunday, it was a beautiful day here.  Not as warm as Saturday but we had lovely clear, blue skies and it was the perfect weather to go and see the plum blossoms!  So we went to 亀戸天神 (Kameido-Tenjin Shrine).

These green signs led the way from the station.  The main road that we went along was pedestrianised which I loved.  Not sure if this is just an every so often thing or an every Sunday thing, but it felt very daring to be able to just walk in the middle of the road.

We got to the shrine and ...

leaves on the trees are turning

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I think this will be the last post featuring the colourful leaves in Japan.  I have managed to stretch it out for about four blog posts, so you know, a fifth would be really pushing it.

These photos are from near Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace Gardens. Really pretty ginkgo trees; a lot of people were there taking photos. We went a couple of weeks ago now, so the trees have probably already shed all their leaves.  In my opinion Tokyo Station is one of the hardest to navigate. I find it even more difficult than Ikebukuro and Shinjuku.   ...

is that all you ever do

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Hello, yes, we went to another garden this weekend.  It is called Koshikawa Korakuen (小石川後楽園).  It was lovely.  The changing leaves festival has just started and continues on until 4th December if I remember rightly.  Not all the leaves had changed yet as you can see from the below photos, but it was still lovely nonetheless.   It was busy though!  We had to queue to get in, not long, perhaps around 15 minutes or so.  It did sort of ruin it there being so many people in the garden, couldn’t really relax and just stand still and enjoy the scenery.   ...

day out at the park

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We’ve had some beautiful autumnal weather here recently in Tokyo.  What better way to spend days like that than outside enjoying nature?  So that’s exactly what we did this weekend!  We went to a couple of parks quite close to home and actually, we hadn’t been to one of them before and it’s absolutely stunning.  It’s a traditional Japanese garden, it even had a Zen garden which I didn’t take pictures of because, well, it’s good to see in real life but not on photos, I think.  We will definitely be going back there as the leaves hadn’t quite changed ...

old news

coffeeart

This weekend I went to Hagi in Yamaguchi.  I was going to post pictures I had taken but…I didn’t really take any!  You can see the problem, I’m sure.  I didn’t take any because we weren’t actually there to sightsee, we went for a family ritual that needed to be carried out.  This involved sitting on the floor for a very long time and then having to stagger over to the alter which is no easy thing when you can’t feel your feet, I can tell you!  It was very hard going seeing family friends (note, not my friends) who ...