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Winter cherry trees in Adachi-ku

January 16, 2012
trees, Global cities, Governments, Nodai, Culture, public space
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農大の鈴木誠先生のおかげで、足立区の桜の木のバスツアーに参加させてもらいました。今年は東京がワシントンにあげた桜の百年記念です。今では、ポトマックという川の桜は有名な風景になりました。寒い日なのに、たくさんの人がツアーに参加しました。足立区はたくさんの種類の桜を育ています。冬に咲いているの木もあります。残念なことに、桜を植えた場所は高い電線や高架高速道路の下です。

Thanks to Professor Suzuki Makoto at Nodai, I went on a bus tour of Adachi ward’s cherry trees. They are celebrating the ward’s role in the 100th anniversary of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to Washington DC, where they are now a landmark landscape along the Potomac.

It was fun to see how many local people turned out for the tour and ward office symposium. Adachi-ku continues to cultivate many types of cherry trees, including this winter blooming one. Unfortunately, many of the open spaces for tree-planting are marginal spaces: below the high voltage power lines, and along the Arakawa River, where they are drowned out by multiple levels of elevated freeway.

Like most of Tokyo, it all depends in which direction you’re looking. Adachi-ku is proud also that it retains many views of Mount Fuji. Many of these views include the river and also smokestacks and factories.

Cherry trees at schools

April 10, 2010
Culture, Nodai, trees
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It is a custom in Tokyo and perhaps throughout Japan to have cherry trees at schools, from elementary to universities. Cherry blossoms occur just as the new school year is beginning.

Above is a beautiful row of cherry trees at Nodai, alongside the new playing field. Below is the elementary school near our apartment.

Unlike hanami parties, seeing sakura at schools occurs throughout the city and during the normal course of your day, while walking, commuting, or going to class or school events. At Nodai, I was heading to a party at the Garden Laboratory marking the new school year. The school I pass often on my way to the JR station.

Harvard Club of Japan talk at Temple University

April 7, 2010
Nodai
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Please come to a free talk about Tokyo Green Space, sponsored by the Harvard Club of Japan and hosted at Temple University. Details below:

Wednesday, April 14, Harvard Club of Japan event at Temple University (English only)
DATE/TIME    Wednesday April 14, 2010 from 7pm to 9pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
ADMISSION   FREE! Please bring your own bento or snack
LOCATION     Temple University, Azabu Hall, Room 206
MAP http://www.tuj.ac.jp/about/access/index.html

2 Upcoming Talks

April 1, 2010
Nodai
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If you’re in Tokyo, you are invited to attend two free talks I am giving soon through the British Council and the Harvard Club of Japan. Here’s the info:

Monday, April 5, Green Leaders Forum at the British Council near Iidabashi (In English with simultaneous Japanese translation)
DATE/TIME    Monday April 5, 2010 from 7pm to 9pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
ADMISSION   FREE! Includes wine, soft drinks and snacks
LOCATION     British Council, Iidabashi Station
MAP http://www.britishcouncil.org/japan-about-us-tokyo-centre-contact-details.htm
(Note: Also speaking is Dr. Junichi Fujino, Senior Climate Policy Researcher, National Institute for Environmental Studies, NIES)

４月５日、月曜日、 Green Leaders Forum、英国文化振興会にて。日本語と英語の同時通訳があります。飯田橋の近くです。
時間：１９：００から２１：００まで。開場は１８：３０。
入場は無料です。ワインやソフトドリンクが提供されます。
アクセス： http://www.britishcouncil.org/jp/japan-about-us-tokyo-centre-contact-details.htm

Wednesday, April 14, Harvard Club of Japan event at Temple University (English only)
DATE/TIME    Wednesday April 14, 2010 from 7pm to 9pm (doors open at 6:30pm)
ADMISSION   FREE! Please bring your own bento or snack
LOCATION     Temple University, Azabu Hall, Room 206
MAP http://www.tuj.ac.jp/about/access/index.html

４月１４日、水曜日、日本ハバード大学クラブ主催、テンプル大学にて。英語のみです。
時間：１９：００から２１：００まで。開場１８：３０。
入場は無料です。お弁当またはスナックをご持参ください。
場所：テンプル大学、麻布ホール、２０６号室
アクセス：http://www.tuj.ac.jp/about/access/index.html

Hakone gardens, Meiji house, and shrine

March 26, 2010
Culture, Nodai, Temples and shrines
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Now that I have posted about Hakone moss outside the organized visit, I will also share some images from the Nodai school trip. Above you can see how many students, faculty, and research fellows participated on the trip by counting the shoes.

We stayed at Hotel Yoshiike, a ryokan with an amazing Kyoto style stroll garden that is large and other worldly. The buildings are very 1960s style boxes, but the gardens make you lose track of both time and place. There is something truly masterful about the streams and pond, the wandering paths, the careful plantings and attentive maintenance.

In addition to appreciating the garden, there were enormous meals, much drinking, and onsen bathing.

The other stunning garden we saw was designed for Yamada Denki’s corporate villa by one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary landscape designer, Sakakibara Hachiro, who also created the modern Japanese garden at Tokyo MidTown. The contrast between the two gardens is stunning: while Yoshiike is flat and terraced, Sakakibara’s is vertical and borrows from the surrounding landscape of steep, forested hills. There is a lot of drama and movement in the garden in terms of waterfalls and paths.

The Tenseien shrine turns a (mostly?) natural waterfall into a shrine. I had never seen the Shinto rope and paper decorations attached to a waterfall.

We also visited this charming Meiji-era house, a small “out-building” attached to a larger villa. The image at the top with the shoes came from this entrance.

More photos after the jump.

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Hakone’s moss-covered roofs and walls

March 25, 2010
Nodai, public space
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On a Nodai Garden Laboratory trip organized by Hattori sensei, I visited some amazing gardens and shrines, and stayed at a beautiful ryokan called Yoshiike. What I did not expect to see were these incredible moss roofs and walls in unexpected places.

While I love designed gardens, I am also amazed at how nature can impose itself on our built environment, creating beauty in unlikely places. I like the idea of the garden extending itself into the everyday.

Even mundane structures come alive when we let nature colonize our habitat.

Late fall trees

December 18, 2009
Nodai, trees, Walking and transit
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Leaving Nodai one December day, I was struck by the bright yellow color of this ginko tree, and how it dwarfs the small street. This is the main street connecting Nodai with the Odakyu line, and the numbers of pedestrians and bicyclists far outnumber cars.

Much of Nodai’s built enviornment are 1950s Bauhaus-style six story buildings, including the one in our lab, with some newer buildings also. Outside of the library is a beautiful quad with old trees that give you a sense of the age and history of this Meiji era campus.

It was raining last Friday when I came for the Garden Lab bonenkai, or end of year party. In the middle of winter, Tokyo is very dry so I am trying to enjoy the last rain.

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Edo gardening in wood block prints

November 16, 2009
Culture, Nodai, public space, Residences, small business, Temples and shrines, trees
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Edo gardening in wood block prints

Encouraged by my host Suzuki Makoto sensei at Tokyo University of Agriculture, I recently visited the Edo Gardening Flowers exhibit being held at the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art until November 26,2009. The exhibit has spectacular colorful wood block prints showing flowers and plants in a variety of urban settings including kimonos, at festivals, commercials nurseries, educational materials, Kabuki actors, and Noh dramas.

The exhibit theme is that the Edo period experienced a “gardening culture” in which a passion for gardens and flowers permeated all social classes, including court nobles, shoguns, feudal lords and the common people. According to the catalogue, “the Japanese people’s passion to flowers surprised the American botanist Robert Fortune as seen in his diary upon his visit to Japan in the late Edo period.”

An interesting comparison is also made between between the widespread practice of Edo gardening and also the interest of common people in wood block prints. It is wonderful to see the use of flowers and plants in both high culture realms and in depictions of everyday life during the Edo period.

Two of my favorite prints are collections of plants used by children to learn the names of flowers. The one below, from the back cover of the exhibit catalog, has the names in hiragana. The exhibit also includes Edo era ceramic plant pots.

Edo gardening in wood block prints

Some more images after the jump, and also a list of plants seen in the wood block prints.

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Firefly habitat in Okayama

November 13, 2009
biodiversity, Community, Governments, Nodai, parks, Visionary, Walking and transit
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Firefly habitat in Okayama

During an October visit to Okayama, a friend stumbled upon an amazing firefly habitat in Nishigawa park, a small canal with a lovely walking path cutting through the center of the city. Although now hatching below water, as the sign above shows, it was amazing to see how a city creats an urban habitat for fireflies. And it reminds me of Professor Suzuki Makoto’s firefly project in Shinagawa, Tokyo.

Okayama firefly habitat

The firefly habitat occupies one long block of the Nishigawa park, which has different walkways, seating areas and plant arrangements on each block. For fireflies, there is a small slow-flowing, side canal where the fireflies hatch on the opposite side of the wood bridge from the main canal. A huge wall of vegetation provides nocturnal darkness and protection.

Firefly habitat in Okayama

I am curious how long the park has been around, and what it is like during summer firefly season.

More on Nishigawa park after the jump.

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Inujima: Reclaiming the Past to Envision the Future

November 12, 2009
Corporations, Culture, Nodai, public space, Visionary
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Inujima: Reclaiming the Past to Envision the Future

In spring the sustainability director of ARUP showed me the incredible designs for Inujima Art Project, and I had known immediately that I wanted to visit and see it for myself. In an earlier post, I discussed its zero energy use through a creative natural cooling, heating and lighting system, and its wastewater recycling program.

Also listed was the the architecture by Sambuichi Hiroshi, art by Yanagi Yukinori using elements from Mishima Yukio’s house and writings, and the benefactor Fukutake Soichiro, Benesse‘s owner and the creator of nearby Naoshima, another island in the Seto Inland Sea.

Inujima: Ruins and Forest

Visiting Inujima on a beautiful fall day in October and spending the night in a school house closed many years ago and converted into a hostel was an incredible experience combining nature, recent history, art, and questions about Japan’s industrial past and its 21st century future.

Inujima: Reclaiming the Past to Envision the Future

Inujima in the early 20th century was a small island with over 3,000 inhabitants in the early 20th century. In a brief period of ten years, Inujima was the site of a massive seirenshou, or copper refinery, placed in the Seto Inland Sea to keep the intense pollution away from Japan’s population centers. With the collapse of copper prices after only ten years, the refinery closed and the island entered a long period of decline.

Inujima: Reclaiming the Past to Envision the Future

Today there are approximately 50 residents, with an average age of 70 or more. The chimney built just before the refinery closed now serves as an integral part of the zero emissions temperature system in the new museum structure. Earlier chimneys had less structural integrity, and large parts of the refinery, including its original power station, are now being reclaimed by thick forest.

After the jump, a discussion of the art work and the island today.

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Nodai fall festival

November 8, 2009
Nodai
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Nodai fall festival

Last weekend was Nodai’s 118th annual fall festival: full of plants for sale, silly costumes, various pageants, ethnic food from world students (Chinese, Brazilian, Korean, Filipino, Mexican, Nepalese and more), and the nationally famous radish dancing.

Nodai fall festival

The main gate was decorated with this amazing live plant wall full of flowers and textures. One of the students from the Zoen (Landscape Architecture Science) department helped install it.

Nodai fall festival

The side entrance was decorated with a faux wood castle gate, a huge dragon mural, and a collage that incorporated daikon radish with pumpkin and Halloween witch.

After the jump, more photos of costumes, pageants, floats, food and more.

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Two young Nodai alumni

November 3, 2009
Nodai, small business
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Suzuki Hokuto Nodai alum makes traditional gardeners' clothes

During the Tokyo University of Agriculture’s fall festival, the Garden Design Lab of the Landscape Architect Sciences department hosted a reunion for alumni under 35. I met two fascinating alumni who had studied at Nodai in the late 1990s. Alumnus Suzuki Hokuto (鈴木北斗), has a shop called Kyouen Store that sells traditional Japanese gardeners’ clothes and supplies, made of denim and using a special dye that repels mosquitos. There are even cool explanations of the different components, including tabi, kyahan, jyouba, harakake, momohiki, koikuchi, and tekkou. The site is in Japanese but the photos give you a good idea of what the clothes look like. The photo above is jyouba and below tekkou, which I have seen Kobayashi Kenji Sensei of Sinajina use. His landscape design firm is Kyouen.

Suzuki Hokuto's tekkou at Kyouen Store

I also met  Satou Koutarou (佐藤光太朗), who has a landscape business Iloha 1128 and also creates art from unbaked soil. It seems related to ceramics but somehow is not fired. He has a cool blog, and a gallery of his art work.

Satou Koutarou art gallery

Aoyama Gakuin

October 12, 2009
biodiversity, Nodai, trees
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Aoyama Gakuin

Aoyama Gakuin, one of Tokyo’s oldest schools, is a green oasis between Omotesando and Shibuya. Founded by American Methodist Episcopalians 135 years ago, the campus includes elementary to university education and has educated many of the country’s elite. The grounds include soaring trees, gardens that combine Japanese and Western styles, and neo-Gothic buildings.

Aoyama Gakuin

The tall pine trees reminded me of Tokyo University of Agriculture, also founded in the Meiji period, and the buildings seem intentionally Ivy League, versus the more Bauhaus buildings at Nodai. Aoyama Gakuin’s location in central Tokyo makes it a natural oasis for people and wildlife.

Aoyama Gakuin

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