Yoyogi Park

This is one of my favorite Japanese friends, my interpreter, Yu-san. She and I had a wonderful dinner out and many stories to share. This is one of those restaurants, where you leave your shoes at the entrance - the waiters stow them away in cubbies - and walk on old hardwood floor to your table, which has a hole space for your feet. Essentially, you are sitting on cushions on the floor, but you are also sitting at a table. Beautiful traditional setting, and Oishi! (That means delicious!) Afterwards, we giggled endlessly when we realized we had both just made a snide comment about some rather loud 'foreigners', as if I wasn't 'one of them!'


Finished teaching Level 2 weekend seminar to a fabulous open-hearted group of people. The Japanese students are so open to receiving information and apply what they learn in their lives. It feels great to be helping them bloom into beautiful flowers! This was a smaller group, and I will see many of them again next weekend in Level 3.



I took a morning excursion to Yoyogi Park, a wooded area which is apparently less of a tourist place and more a local spot for groups and just regular people to enjoy some space. I saw many people nodding off on the benches - not homeless folks. People live in close quarters here and work very long hours, so it's not uncommon to see people in pubic places trying to catch on some sleep or down time.

This fountain was one of three set in a lake surrounded by trees. You can slightly see one of the high rise buildings of the city in the background. The area directly in front of the railing and benches is a deck that is reflecting because it was pouring rain!!! I have been avoiding the crowds this trip. The fountains were set to rise tall, and then shut down and start small again.


The blue painting is a 20 foot high wall mural on one side of a cement pedestrian overpass. The other was an equally wild red dragon. (face at the bottom is a tiger).

And this was the largest rose trellis I have ever seen! See the bicycle rider for scale.



(Trying to work out the page layout on this blog. It's driving me crazy! Everything moves, but not where I want it to!)




So this tree caught my attention. There was a placard in Japanese, showing a very old photo, where the tree was split, no roots showing. The first branch is maybe 10 feet tall. My guess is that this tree was part of the original Meiji Emperor's garden. (This whole park is connected to the Meiji Palace and Shrine I visited last winter). Much of it was destroyed in the bombing and fire of WWII. There is a notion of honoring such a tree as sacred, having been a survivor, so they worked to keep it going, until it grew new roots from the opening. Sort of like the Japanese people themselves!

I enjoyed spending some time in a wooded, less crowded spot. And even hunkered down in a ladies bathroom with a group of teenage girls, who were very friendly. Public bathrooms are becoming my new favorite rain sanctuary!


And Mr. Crow here was just too perfectly posed on this bike. Wonder what happened to the rider!!!

I'm doing my three days of sessions this week, with Friday free and then my last weekend seminar. The last part of the trip has several social dinners. It's nice to have friends here that get together outside of work. I've also been invited to an African Xylophone music performance at a Yoga studio, which should be something different!

I'll try to post again in a few days. Hope all is well where ever you are.

Love Daeryl