Hanegi Park, then Shinjuku Gyoen, then Ginza

Today brought with it the first real sunshine in oh at least 10 days. After I finished my lone morning lesson, I set out to Hanegi Park to photograph even more ume (plum) blossoms. The park turned out to be much smaller than I expected, even though the entrance (see below) looked promising.

There were quite a few people enjoying ume hanami, although the park suffers from what most parks in Tokyo suffer from, an almost utter lack of grass meaning one has to spread one’s blanket out over at best dirt and today mud. This is not to mention the ubiquitous “caw, caw, cawing” of crows. I wasn’t that impressed and left rather quickly. I still had several hours of day light, so I headed to trusty Shinjuku Gyoen, where there is grass all around, although since it’s still winter it’s basically only short straw now. Take a look carefully at the photo below to see a little green friend I zoomed in on. Pixelation is due to having to use the full digital zoom to get a shot of him/her. This little green bird was quite the celebrity. I’d say there were at least 4 or 5 other camera otakus next to me taking photos of her/him and by the number of shutter clicks in rapid succession heard you’d of thought that it was Shizuka Arakawa up there!

Afterwards I took a few more shots of some other flowers before finally relaxing and eating my hummus sandwich. While peacefully eating my sandwich I was in fact nearly assaulted by a marauding baby missing a sock. Then as the bright sun was shining in my face I pulled out my trusty sketchpad and oil crayons and made my first drawing of 2006.

I later went to the Ginza Apple Store to hear a live music performance, but it was nothing to comment upon.

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