The fall season and “back to school” go hand-in-hand in many parts of the states. In Tokyo the fall colors a delayed by not weeks, but months. Today’s photos were taken in December. The foliage on the Waseda University campus, although mostly gone now, was quite beautiful in late November and early December.

Once the leaves began to fall, the campus looked quite different in early morning, before the cleaning crews arrived. The place was blanketed in leaves.

Unfortunately, the Japanese are far too efficient at raking leaves. They do so on a daily basis so seeing the leaves on the ground is something of a rarity.

In the above photo you can see three grounds keepers removing the fallen leaves, pretty much as they fall. There were probably 10 people on campus doing nothing but making sure leaves were not under foot. I would have preferred to walk through a few inches of the stuff myself.

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Posted on December 17th, 2009 under Japan • Tags: people, Tokyo, waseda university, 紅葉. • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed