Spring flowers

I already wrote about sakura (cherry blossom) fashion. Now here are some snaps from our annual picnics (hanami) under the cherries.

Last weekend, the peak of the flower experience, we went to Shinjuku Gyoen, a huge, well-kept park near Shinjuku station, with many families from Arno's school, Willowbrook. Crowds lined up outside the gates to get in.


Blaine took this gorgeous shot that expresses the pure hanami experience of picnicking beneath the boughs.


Arno took charge of my camera and delivered this self-portrait...


... and a shot of his parents. I am drinking a can of hot green tea purchased from a vending machine.


Lucinda and Arno


The finale to this year's hanami was in Kinuta Koen (Kinuta Park) in Sendagaya-ku, Tokyo, at the Willowbrook spring picnic. Amazing trees!


An elegantly dressed older lady brought out to gaze at the blossoms.


And Arno's Take/Takenoko (Bamboo/Bamboo shoots) class this year.


Happy spring!

Springtime in Tokyo

It's cherry blossom - "sakura" - time in Tokyo, and we've been enjoying the season. Today I went for a wonderful bike ride with a friend, Cathy, to see some "sakura" sights.


We rode through Aoyama Cemetery...


...where schoolchildren, old people and hipsters were lunching near or under the trees. That's the big event: standing or sitting near the blossoms, absorbing the atmosphere, and taking pictures of friends doing the same thing.



Then we rode to the Imperial Palace. You can't go inside the palace walls, but what we saw was delightful: the moat, the scenery from the palace gates.



I liked this refined couple.


And more photo-happy sakura visitors.


It was a lot of fun to be a tourist in our own city.