November 10 - 16, 2008

Shinjuku Goen: This is a massive park in the midst of one of the busiest business districts in Tokyo. There is an entrance fee (only ~$2), and once you get inside, you understand why. There are several different types of garden within this park...There is a French inspired boulevard with benches lining one side, along with a rose garden that smells divine (and that's no exaggeration!)....There is also a traditional Japanese garden (of course), a mother-and-child forest (we never quite figured out why it was named this), a traditional English park, and (something that we happened upon) a chrysanthemum festival.

We saw 'trees' of chrysanthemums (the traditional imperial style of presenting them), some of which had 500 - 700 blooms on display. We also saw cascades to mimic the flowers as they would be seen growing down a mountainside. There were the 'plate' mums that needed saucer-shaped paper to support the blooms....they were that big!?! There were the mums that looked like big, mighty brains. And, there were the mum explosions, as seen above, that were more dainty and were historically tended to by samurais to learn the principles of dedication and patience. How cool is that?

We were also able to wander down paths that were buried in fallen leaves--it was so nice to hear them scrunch and crinkle under our feet--and so hard to resist forming a monstrous pile of them and jumping right in ;). This was one of the few spots in the park that hadn't been meticulously wiped clean of any leaves--the 'leaf zamboni' hadn't been through yet. This was one of the funnier scenes we've witnessed here. There was a truck, completely dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the trees in this park, that went up and down the lawn 'vacuuming' up fallen leaves. This was the secret to the leafless lawns in the English garden, we concluded....And something also so very Japanese. The relationship with nature here is very, shall we say, controlled.....

Mandala Live House: That evening, we attended our first 'live house' performance. From the promotional materials, the band was billed as playing a fusion of Japanese taiko drums, guitar and bass guitar--a combination of rock, Latin, and traditional Japanese drumming. We loved the atmosphere of this live house, which is fairly well-known and prestigious here. The food was also tasty....the music, however, was a little disappointing. The band only played rock tunes and left out the Latin and drumming influences. Oh well, you can't have everything. They have great potential, though, considering this was their first live show together.

Kagurazaka: On our 'Sunday' this week, we took the opportunity to visit a neighbourhood recommended to me by one of my co-workers. What a fabulous place this was! It was the first (and probably only) place that we emerged from the subway to exclaim, "This doesn't feel like Tokyo at all!" There weren't any high rises to block the view of the sky, the streets felt wider, and it felt like a small town rather than a city within a city. This area of Tokyo also has a strong francophone population so there were several French cafes and bakeries. Many of the French restaurants were a bit pricey for us, however we came across a cute cafe just in the nick of time.....we arrived only 30 minutes before they closed for the afternoon (restaurants here open for lunch 11-2 and then re-open for dinner 5-close).

The cafe, Saint Martin, was off the main road, so it felt like a great find after much searching....We thoroughly enjoyed having the poisson du jour and poulet 'something-something' frites with some wine while watching people wander by outside. It was quite a challenge for me to dredge up French from schooldays long gone, however it eventually came back to me (after much sifting through of the Spanish, English and Japanese that kept popping up!).

Now that it is full-on fall here, and central heating does not exist in Japan, it is very, very, very chilly in our apartment! As evidenced in the photo here, I have a fleece throw blanket around my shoulders and I am cocooned in our blankets in an attempt to stay warm.....Brrrr! It's the damp cold that you would expect in a coastal city, however the lack of central heating is very unfortunate. I can now see why the Warmlet is well-loved here--the thought of getting out of a warm bed to sit on a freezing toilet seat is nothing less than teeth-chattering cruelty!