Japanese School Uniforms – updated

Anyways, go read the new version of Hachiko here.

(and, by the way, if you come across any other corrupted posts, please email me so I can fix it)

No idea what flower this is, but it looks nice, doesn’t it? I found this on one of my multi-hour walks getting lost in Okazaki.

Houses cram as many flowers into the yard as they can. Often they spill out into the street. In America, neighbors would complain about this kind of thing. Here, everyone just enjoys it.

A 3-headed monk outside of Ryukai-in Temple. I’ve never seen one of these before.

The gate to Ryukai-in. Ieyasu’s grandfather had an odd dream one night. He told a monk about it and the monk interpreted it to mean he would conquer all of Japan. He was so happy he built this temple. The monk was only off by a few generations.

Some lazy monks at the temple.

Entrance to the temple grave yard.

Some Engrish for your amusement

Found this guy outside a sake store. I suppose it is a drunk traveler.

The entrance to a shrine I found hidden in the forest.

Moving into the shrine. Spooky

Whew, it’s safe. Only kitsune (foxes) live there.

In case you forgot what “wow” meant and were wondering.

Yes, yet another temple. The monks at this one were having a little tea party.

A random old shop.

As usual, if you enjoyed these, check out my flickr page for more.

To say cherry blossoms are a big deal in Japan would be an under-statement. Every year between February and April, Japan turns white and pink. The white ones (soimeyoshino / 染井吉野 / そめいよしの) are the most popular. These bloom in late March/early April in Honshu (the main island of Japan) and line up nicely with the beginning of the school year. Because of this, many Japanese see the blossoms as the start of the new year.

The someiyoshino is actually a fairly recent variety, being developed in the mid to late 19th century. Despite this, someiyoshino have become so deeply associated with cherry blossoms that most movies and books of old Japan feature them, even though they didn’t exist at the times these works of fiction show!

As always, click on the photo for a larger version, and go to my flickr page to grab the full resolution version if you want it. Also, read more on someiyoshino and cherry blossoms in general from wikipedia.

Anyways, enough of that. Here are some of the better photos I took this past week with my iPhone. Descriptions follow each photo and be sure to click on them for a larger size.

Wisteria (fuji in Japanese.. sorry, still can’t get characters to show up on the website. Working on it.) are in full bloom right now. This is from the wisteria festival that’s going on this week.

Azalea (tsutsuji) are starting to bloom too. They are literally everywhere. I think just about every street in Okazaki is lined on both sizes with them.

Not sure what this flower is, but it was nice.

Local shrine. I love the torii gate.

Rice fields near my apartment. They are overgrown with grass and weeds at the moment, but farmers will be clearing them off to plant rice soon.

Fallen petals from the cherry trees (sakura). Most of the blossoms are several weeks gone, but a few remain, mostly on the ground.

O-jizo-sama, deep in meditation. These are from a small temple I just discovered the other day.

If you liked these, you can see more on my iPhone photos website or on flickr. I’ll try to do a “best of” post like this more often.