Atagoya shrine
I couldn’t find much information on this shrine but its location is amazing, overlooking the Tama river valley. At the back of the shrine there is a large pagoda and to get up from the valley floor you need to ascend a lot of very steep, narrow, stairs.






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Inokahira Park
I was planning to head to the mountains again and do another walk but during the night I was woken repeatedly by the sound of rain and hail hitting the window. The hail was still evident the next morning when I went to Inokahira Park.


Inokahira Park was a present to the people of Tokyo from the Emperor around the beginning of the 19th century and its centre piece is a huge pond surrounded by cherry blossom trees.


There is the chance to hire paddle boats and cruise up and down the pond. Some of the shapes of the boats are interesting but the most attention grabbing were these huge swans.


At one end of the pond there is a temple dedicated to Benzaten, who is apparently the vengeful goddess of love bringing the untimely finish to love affairs and is only supposed to affect those couples that enjoy boat rides on the pond. The pond is now full of kissing fish.



The other end of the pond contains great walks through the trees and across small bridges. It is hard to believe that this park is in the middle of Tokyo only 30 minutes from home.



During the cherry blossom season is it hard to move in this park and can only imagine that must look amazing.

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Cherry Blossoms – Missed them by that much
I was out of Japan during the peak week of the cherry blossom period and managed to get these pictures from the Aoyama cemetery on my return. Even though I was a little late the colour and amount of blossoms gives some idea as to just how spectacular the viewing is during this week. As with autumn colour the Japanese weather bureau announces the expected blossoming times and people organise hanami.

Hanami usually involves an outdoor party under the cherry blossom trees. This includes the Aoyama cemetery, which, along with the Shinjuku Gyoen is known as very popular hanami locations. People were still out enjoying the sight of the blossoms and celebrating the beginning of spring even a week after the peak cherry blossom period.


Prior to coming to Japan I couldn’t understand either the autumn leaf or cherry blossom thing. The flowering of the cherry blossom trees coincides with the beginning of spring and occurs on such a great scale that you are forced to take note that the season have changed and the weather is going to warm up. I think that I’m beginning to understand it.
 



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Growing building
While walking around the area near the Tokyo tower I came across this great looking building. While in most modern cities people have worked out how to grow gardens on the roof and patios of their building it takes something special to cover the outside of a building in plants. It looks very spectacular.




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Coffee shop
I recently visited Rome for meetings and after 24 hours travelling my body let me know that caffeine was what was needed. The La Casa del Caffe is a great little coffee bar about 40 minutes walk from the hotel that has been roasting and serving their own brand of coffee since the end of world war two. In addition you can look out the front door and watch the crowds mill around the Parthenon.

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Ostia Antica
With a few hours to spare I headed to the ancient port of Rome, the Ostia Antica. The ruins are within a half hour train ride of the hotel and are a great way to spend a couple of hours before having people speak at you for a week.

The city was founded in the 4th centaury BC and once stood guard at the mouth of the Tiber river ensuring that no unwanted visitors arrived in the city.


The ruins are amazingly preserved including the Amphitheatre (where a class of German students gave an impromptu rendition of Romeo and Juliet).


Some of the old bath houses must have had some spectacular mosaics on their floors including this one of a fish.


You can walk all around, and over, the ruins without so much as a fence or signs telling you to stay out (with the exception of the Roman toilets).


There are also the well preserved ruins of a cafe that apparently served hot and cold food and drinks (around 100 BC) that also had a courtyard with fountains and benches so customers could sit outside in the sun and have their coffee. The early alfresco dining experiences?


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Hamarikyu Gardens
The Hamarikyu gardens are a public park just over an hours walk from where we are living. It was opened to the public in 1946 and the gardens were developed on a site that used to contain a villa of a Shogun around the 17th century and prior to that had a history of providing a place for the Japanese royal family to escape and enjoy some time relaxing near Tokyo bay.



It is mind blowing to think that people have been using this spot for relaxation for hundreds of years. At the entrance to the park there is a pine tree over 300 years old and some of the islands that provide platforms for the bridges were built around the same time.


The centre piece of the gardens is a teahouse in the middle of the pond that provides traditional Japanese tea ceremonies.
 
 
The gardens are also know as a place to come and see flowers that are planted to ensure that at least one display of spectacular flowers can be observed all year round. When I visited this time the rape was in flower along with the beginning of the plum blossoms.
 
 
The people of the area also take advantage of the gardens for photos of the milestones in their lives. This couple had just got married and decided to have some of their photos taken in the garden over looking the pond and teahouse.
 
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Jingu Gaien
The street leading to the Jingu gaien is lined by well manicured ginkgo trees that would make this an amazing spot to visit when the autumn colours come out.

The middle of the park is dominated by the Kaiga-kan. The Kaiga-kan was built to honor the Meiji Emperor in the second half of the 1920 and is used to house a number of paintings depicting historical events that were important during the reign of the Meiji Emperor.



 

The area is now also home to a number of sporting stadia including 2 full sized base ball stadiums, an outdoor field that can host 4 baseball games at the same time and the rugby field where the Wallabies played the All Blacks late in 2009.


 
There are also some very well organised homeless guys here, including this guy who managed to find some coat hangers to keep his cloths on.
 
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Aoyama cemetery
After returning to Tokyo I needed a little walk around town just clear away some cobwebs and headed to the Aoyama cemetery, a 45 minute walk from home, to check out an area that lots of people had told me I should visit. It was a great day with typical spring weather and the road through the middle of the cemetery would be amazing when the cherry blossoms come out as the trees line every metre of the road.

The Aoyama cemetery was Japans first municipal cemetery and was opened in the 1870’s. There are also a number of foreigners buried in this cemetery.

One thing the Japanese really know how to do is build shrines and monuments to those that have passed on. The Aoyama cemetery had some huge pieces of inscribed stone bearing testimony to the lives of those that came before.

The families of the departed tend to the graves and all of the graves were amazingly maintained. While I walked through the cemetery I saw people pruning trees, sweeping up leaves, and leaving offerings of beer and cigarettes.


In an Alfred Hitchcock moment a huge flock of crows started circling the cemetery and calling out to each other. They then began landing on some of the monuments, eyeing me intently – I decided that it was time to depart – the cemetery.









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Tama river fisheries
On my recent trip to the mountains I came across a popular fishing spot on the Tama river. It costs about 3500 yen ($45) to fish in this stretch of river for the day.


I headed up river from where I first saw the river intent on seeing if I could spot any fish in the river. The first clue of what was coming was the banner across the bottom of the river “beat”. As you can see from the river it looked a lot like some of the water you would see in the New Zealand mountains, just not the same wilderness experience.
 
Upon rounding the corner in the river I was greeted by the sight of about two dozen guys fishing in the series of beats up and out of sight around the next bend in the river. From looking at the website of the “fishery” it is apparent that the section of river is divided into a number of areas dedicated to different methods of fishing. The fisheries office also has some storage pools that contain any number of 1-1.5 pound rainbow trout that were placed in the river during the course of the day.



In an almost sacrilegious occurrence these guys lump spin fishers in with fly fishers. The top section of the open waters on this day was reserved for people practising traditional Japanese long pole fishing. It uses equipment very similar to coarse fishing equipment (long multi-piece carbon fibre rods with no reel and a fixed section of line on the end).
 
 
There was a mixture of water that could be fished from some beautiful looking pocket water to so long slow pools.



Spin fishermen were by far the most prevalent and were catching a number of fish from the slower pools using small red spinners. As the fish were still in their spawning colour I can only assume that the spinners were the fly fishers equivalent of a globug.


One guy pulled out about 8 fish (all uniform colours and size) while I watched and then just packed up – picked up the fish headed back to his car and drove off. A nice 30 minutes of fishing if you can get it.


While it was good to find this spot as a potential fishing destination and having it within 2 and a half hours of home is not such a bad thing the one major drawback is the lack of any sort of experience. I have seen photos of this particular section of river during summer time where you could fit another person onto the bank. I might have to give it a miss and try and find somewhere a little more remote.
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Truely refreshing drinkability
Continuing my research into Japanese beer I was standing in front of the beer fridge at my local supermarket and noticed the smallest can of beer in the world – why bother? So Asahi comes in 135 ml (perfect for the kids lunch boxes), 250 ml, 350 ml and 500 ml cans.

All this and it has "truely refreshing drinkability", what else could you want?


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Tsunami
I managed to get back to Australia for celebrations in the beginning of March and was looking forward to nothing more than escaping down the beach and having a bit of a swim. Unfortunately Japan had followed me to Australia and all beaches on the east coast of Australia had been “closed” following the earthquake in Chile. Prior to moving to Japan I probably would have gone for a swim at the beach anyway but now I must conform…
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