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Mt. Fuji sunset from Shinjuku (Tokyo, Japan – November 3, 2009)
On a recent, extremely clear sky day, after rain and wind, I went to the top of Shinjuku to watch the sun set. It was marvelous. And yes, that is Mt. Fuji (in the upper right part of the photo) from Tokyo. The sun set on one side of the building and then…
The moon rose over the other side of Shinjuku…
And then the people came out to play…
Last week we visited Owakudani and some other areas of Hakone for the first time in two and a half years. Mt. Fuji made an appearance or two before quickly hiding itself behind clouds.
I visited Enoshima (江ノ島) for the first time during my second trip to Kamakura. I arrived at about 4 p.m. to see the sights and take in the sunset. Strangely, as the weather was perfect and the skies were clear, nearly everyone was leaving the island. After walking up hundreds of stairs I reached the top and began my descent to the back side of the island. Although there was space (and restaurants with stunning views) for thousands of tourists only a few of us were there; half were fishing.
How a place (稚児ヶ淵, chigogabuchi) with such an incredible sunset could be so deserted on a warm, Friday evening in September with a population of 15+ million living less than an hour away baffled me. I didn’t complain though. The experience, like many sunsets, seemed surreal. Many of the restaurants mentioned above sat completely empty or were closed. Either this place is something of a secret or the numbers change dramatically on the weekend.
The giant hawks at this place (photos coming here soon) were a welcome change from the typical sea gulls at places like this around the world.
This is the view of Mt. Fuji after some serious zoom work and a nice crop from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Just kidding. I would say something similar while heading south on the Golden Gate Bridge (天気がよければ右手の方によく見ると富士山が見えるでしょう) when I was a tour guide in San Francisco for a Japanese company. You’d be surprised how many customers I had who actually looked hard out the window to the west before I told them I was just joking.
Actually, this is from Lake Ashi (芦ノ湖) near Hakone. My camera was at only 35mm and there was no crop so you can see how impressive Fuji San is from this neck of the woods. We were tailing a boat very similar to the one we were on.
I took this photograph from a boat on Lake Ashi near Hakone. No cropping has been done to the image, but I did have my camera on 12X optical zoom. The sky was nice and clear (other than the few clouds shrouding the top of Fuji) as it had rained during the night before.
Less than a week after starting The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama I have finished reading it. The book isn’t short at over 400 pages, but I found it hard to put down. That, coupled with having to wait for breakfast in bed on father’s day for three hours 😉 , allowed me to finish The Street of a Thousand Blossoms in little time.
As mentioned in my prior blog entry on the subject, I really enjoyed the Yanaka setting. I felt like I could connect with more than just Yanaka though. For instance, I spent a day in the late 80s watching Sumo at Ryogoku Kokugikan. The highlight of the day was witnessing the great Chiyonofuji’s bout in person. So all of the Sumo dialogue in this book brought back pleasant memories. I’ve always been fascinated with Japanese masks (check out this blog daily for some outstanding photography and discussion) so Kenji’s story held my interest. And, of course, there is the trip to Hakone which I have also made. Basically everything felt familiar and resonated well.
The story is compelling, drawing on the themes of renewal and hope. I don’t want to give away too many details for those of you who haven’t yet read The Street of a Thousand Blossoms.
The occasional errors in Japanese are my main criticism. Although Tsukiyama has a Japanese name, she doesn’t understand Japanese. This won’t be noticed by readers who are in her same shoes, but those who can speak the language will cringe at times. One example is her use of hai. She uses it far more frequently and in situations in which Japanese would not. Another is her use of the unconjugated verb hairu (to enter) as a command. She should have said something like haitte kudasai or o hairi kudasai instead of just hairu. A final one (there are others) that I’ll offer as an example is the Hakone Lake which she calls Ashino. In English it should be called Lake Ashi. In Japanese it is called ashinoko (芦ノ湖). The “no” indicates it is the Lake (ko) called (no–shows possession like ‘s in English) Ashi. Put another way, one could translate Lake Tahoe as “tahoe no ko” in Japanese but you would never call it “tahoeno” in English or Japanese.
She gets Japanese culture and customs wrong on some counts as well. For example, she has the school year starting in September like it does in the U.S. In Japan, though, school years, company fiscal years, etc. start in April–not September.
These minor critiques aside, this book is very enjoyable even if you haven’t been to Yanaka, Sumo, Hakone, Nara, or even Japan.
Here are a couple more pictures I took last year from areas mentioned in The Street of a Thousand Blossoms.
This is Lake Ashi with Mt. Fuji, mostly shrouded in clouds, in the background. The place on the right may be where Tsukiyama envisions Hiroshi and Aki staying.
This is another picture from the ferry on Lake Ashi. The kanji say 箱根神社 or Hakone Jinja. “Jinja” means Shinto Shrine or Temple.