And now a typhoon...

oops I mustn't have downloaded the picture... it's gone... but it was a typhoon that actually was no longer a typhoon by the time it reached Tokyo.

It has been raining for days....In the tradition of weather for the headlines, weather for the main, and weather for the weather in the evening news,  Friday night's NHK news was interviewing people in the street about how the rain in making it difficult to dry clothes, has resulted in sports cancellations, and is making people feel sticky on the subway etc.  

Typhoons usually come in September-October. It's very unseasonable. Usually typhoons this far north cause little damage, this time is is more of a worry than usual as the nuclear plant in Fukushima appears likely to get  heavy rains - and perhaps reasonably strong winds - a situation TEPCO doesn't seem equipped to deal with.  The lack of transparency from TEPCO is wearing very very thin.  Furthermore, saturated soil is never a good combination with earthquakes......

http://www.jma.go.jp/en/typh/110224d.html

Buck passing

It is with some irritation that I  received the news from the university that they are cutting the term two weeks short to contribute to energy saving.

The economic rationalist in me says.... what about all those fees?
The scholar in me says....... but I enjoy my classes....
The cynic in me wonders....... why is it only the uni I study at and not the uni I teach at.

The realist in me is quite annoyed at what seems to be typical responsibility shifting.
There are no green curtains going up, there is nothing like Tokyo University's sustainable campus.  The toilets still have the toilet seat warmers going, in the cafeteria the other day the doors to the outside were open with the aircon on.
It is totally devoid of imagination, total buck passing, and so small picture.  Thousands of students sitting at home with thousands of aircons on rather than being at uni and sharing the same aircon... There has been no thought about efficacy, just short minded expedient decision making...  and isn't that what created the electricity problem in the first place?

Mukojima Hyakkaen

Yesterday we cycled to Mukojima Hyakkaen - a park in Higashi Mukojima near the Sumida River.  Though it features on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Parks and Garden's of Tokyo website, it's not really on the radar of most Tokyo-ites.  It's not on the japan guide website,  I've never seen it come up on the Lonely Planet's thorntree and neither my bilingual nor Hiro's Japanese atlas distinguished it from any of the thousands of pocket parks through the city.  It's a small, (1 hectare) but delightful park and  the only remaining flower garden in Tokyo from the Edo age.  It was begun as a private garden in  1804 and then passed to government ownership in 1938 - the leaflet didn't explain why or how, but usually when historic or beautiful places are passed to government hands it has less to do with benevolence and more to do with being behind in tax payments.

Aesthetically Mukojima is quite different from any  public garden I have seen in Tokyo. The free range nature is very different from the highly constructed, but ultra minimalist Zen gardens like Ryoanji in Kyoto.  And different again from the manicured Chinese style gardens like Koishikawa Korakuen.  It reminds me of Hiro's mother's garden or of the gardens in front of the public housing nearby that has just been torn down. By conventional standards it  is somewhat unkempt - 'weeds' don't seem to be pulled out, plants aren't standardized into neat rows, there is little in the way of bare soil or conspicuous cultivation.  It seems like a kind of a 'plants rights' garden - just grow happily, wherever.    And yet there is a  balance and beauty in the seeming lack of order that creates its own harmony.  Hmm... it's a difficult concept to express... This website has a reasonable stab at explaining this idea  somewhat, in the context of  wabi sabi -  a word that seems more popular in western interior design and architecture magazines than it is in Japan.

Mukojima Hyakkaen (Mukojima 100 flowers park)
Higashi Mukojima, Sumida-ku, Tokyo
near Keisei Hikifune, Tobu Oshiage stations.

A tea house

Jungle in the park

Classical Japanese garden features

A bit hazy, but Tokyo Sky Tree is nearby.

Free range plants.

A clover tunnel

A ... flower...

The wisteria on the trellis above had finished blooming -
but looks out on a very peaceful aspect.

some of the 100 flowers of the garden

Japan quiz - Kyoto quiz

This is the last Japan tourism quiz - Kyoto. In jpg format because blogger doesn't do a great range of formats.