Today’s Special Guest: Winter
Conveniently scheduled for a national holiday so hundreds of thousands of commuters wouldn’t be inconvenienced by trains that occasionally had to pause while snow and/or ice and/or tree limbs could be cleared from the tracks, this year’s 24 hours of winter did not disappoint!
Snow bucketed down from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. as the special guest season of the day posed for photos, played pranks on delivery trucks without snow tires, and gave everybody new stories to tell later while quaffing fortifying quantities of beer.
This year, I started at the Meiji Shrine, where tree limbs were cracking off and falling with video-game-like regularity, perilously close to Mario and Luigi as they ogled the maidens in their coming-of-age kimonos.
Next stop, Nakameguro, to see what the cherry trees look like in the nude.
Finally, one of the most gorgeous spots in Tokyo, in any season. The Rikugi-en garden.
If you’d like to visit the Meiji Shrine or Rikugi-en Garden the next time you’re in Tokyo, maps are on my website, The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had.
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Jonelle Patrick View All
Writing mystery books set in Tokyo is mostly what I do, but I also blog about the odd stuff I see every day in Japan. I'm a graduate of Stanford University and the Sendagaya Japanese Institute in Tokyo, and a member of the International Thriller Writers, the Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters In Crime. When I'm not in Tokyo, I live in San Francisco. I also host a travel site called The Tokyo Guide I Wish I'd Had, so if you're headed to Japan and want to check out the places I take my friends when they're in town, take a look!
Jonelle Patrick's Only In Japan 
wow nice photos Jonelle! I’d like to take some photos as well but I had to finish my 3DCG project… U_U
Wah, accursed deadlines! ( ; _ ; ) But I want to see your project when it’s done! (And at least you were inside where it was dry. I got so wet that I had to apologize at a restaurant for paying with limp, soggy money!)
Uuaaaa. Soooo good! That is, this pictures are breath-taking! Especially that one of the torii. Well touched up? Or just naturally great~?
They’re cropped, but these didn’t have to be touched up because they were all taken at places where the pictures practically take themselves! The truth is, you have to actually possess some sort of anti-talent superpower to take a bad picture at a Japanese garden or shrine.
Hahaha, I understand the feeling.
Gorgeous photos. I wish I were in Japan right now.
Haha, actually, right now we’re unfortunately past “picturesque” and into in the bitterly cold frozen dirty snow remnants phase >_<. But it was pretty while it lasted!
What Lisa said. Really beautiful images. One of them in particular reminded me to tell you that Portland’s Japanese Garden will be exhibiting 50 or so prints by Toko Shinoda, whose work I first encountered in your house. That one image inspired a series of 4 (so far) fiber arts pieces, and I’m not done yet! I’m really jazzed to see the exhibit.
That exhibit sounds wonderful! Would love to see your fiber art pieces too!^^
Beautiful pictures, Jonelle.
Doesn’t this kinda look like a wintertime woodblock print from the Edo Era?
YES! I was just thinking that. Especially when I saw pictures of girls out in furisode (?) on Coming of Age day, struggling against the snow in their umbrellas. I thought wow, it does look like a woodblock print from the Edo era! Thank you so much for posting these.
ダンヒル吉祥寺