Springtime Huzzah!

Ohisashiburi! Longtime no post! PS - click for larger photos.

H. at Musashino Koen

Being a Canadian kid, I love snow and I love winter, but after five or so months of icy weather, the first spring melt is always a welcome breath of fresh air. You know it's going to snow again, but still, it gives one hope.


Well, spring is not quite the same in Tokyo as it is back home (except for the knowledge that it will get cold again before it gets warm for good), but still, the first warm days bring a certain amount of giddiness with them. There's just something refreshing about not being able to see your breath when you wake up in the morning (and I mean inside the house - oh central heating, how I miss you!). 

Hark! A bird!

Just a week or two ago, we had quite a snowfall here (for Tokyo). It was perfectly Robert Frost-esque. H. and I took the opportunity to go to the park and build a big snowman with a traffic cone for a hat. We built a smaller one just outside our apartment (no hat). Unfortunately, the falling snow was so wet we thought we ought not take our cameras, but trust me, it was heavenly.


The snow lasted approximately three days (and really, that's stretching it - it was mostly gone by noon the next day), and but a short time later, the thermometer reached 20C. Yup. 20C. In February. Oh, kaloo kalay! 

Toad. Not singing. Just chillin'.

Do you know what the first day of warm weather means in Tokyo? I thought it just meant no more kotatsu (*sigh*), but it actually means toads. Lots of them. Big ones. All over the place (well, park). And lots of singing. Singing toads looking for mates. H. and I went walking in the park Friday evening and the pond was fairly teeming with them. When we went back today, the pond was a tangle of toad eggs. Now, I've seen toad eggs before, but this was unbelievable. It looked like a snarl of giant worms or intestines or something. Gross. But if it means lots of cute little tadpoles/pollywogs and toads, then that's cool.  

Gross eggs.

The warm weather also means that the ume blossoms (plum blossoms) start coming out in full force. They've been blooming in fits and starts since late December, but the past few days have really got them going. H. and I spent the afternoon wandering and snapping photos of them (and toads). We also spent the day suffering from another sign of spring: hay fever. How I despise you, cypress trees! It's almost enough to make a girl wish that spring would pack up and go the way of the dodo, but then again, no: waking up with a sneeze is still better than waking up to a 5C room.

Vegetable garden in February. Sweet!

Fishing pond. No old men today. Weird.

Rice paddy. Currently tadpole hatchery.

Don't know what this is.

Ume!

Sakura!? Hayai, ne! (Cherry blossom!? Early, eh!)

More ume.

And more ume.

Summertime in the City - Flowers!

"Oh," sighed my husband, "there are so many flowers these days that I have never seen before."

Poor chap. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, times are always a-changin'. In the case of flower variety, I would argue that it is for the better because I just love pretty things.

I actually don't have many pictures of flowers at the moment, but I am sure they will proliferate over the coming months, so just hold tight if you're aching to look at pictures of flowers. But, for starters, here are a few.

Morning glories are called "asagao" in Japanese, which translates as "morning face". They are all over the place. These are from a house in our neighbourhood. 

If you're interested, find a video here to learn how to make an origami morning glory. It's in Japanese, but you really only have to watch the lady's fingers to get the gist of things. A few of these, plus leaves (also shown) made with some delicate washi (Japanese paper) and glued onto some cardstock, make a really cute greeting card.   

Did you know that the seeds of the morning glory are hallucinogenic? According to the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility, a Government of Canada webpage, the Ipomoea tricolor variety was long used in southern Mexico as a hallucinogen, prepared into a drink. But I'd stay away from the seeds in the "Bon Appetit" way if I were you - if you scroll down to the bottom of the linked webpage, there's a story of one attempted trip that went badly wrong... Actually, there are two stories. One about a cat (accidental, one would think) and one about a girl (250 seeds consumed, eh? Nothing accidental about that).                     

I believe these to be rhododendrons, although I may be mistaken. I'm always forgetting. In Japanese (if I'm right...) they are called either "shakunage" or "tsutsuji" (which is also one of the words for azaleas, my other guess, but as they're from the same genus, this isn't surprising). According to eHow, rhododendrons have ten stamens, while azaleas have only five or six. I counted the stamens in the picture of the white flowers, and there appear to be ten, hence my guess.

There is a hotel in Hakone (the Odakyu Group's Hotel de Yama, named with a delightful blend of French and Japanese) that is famous for its azaleas and rhododendrons (apparently, it has 3000 azaleas). Each year Japanese descend on the grounds in droves to get some sweet pictures with Fuji san and Ashinoko (Lake Ashi) in the background. When we went, alas, they had barely started blooming and the whole flower-seeing 
adventure was a bit of a bust. *sigh*

Poppies, poppies, poppies - how I love poppies! These poppies were part of a group of multi-coloured poppies in one of the parks near my house, Musashino-Koen. They are so pretty!