East Gardens of the Imperial Palace

There is an urban legend in Japan that under each beautiful Sakura, or cherry tree, are corpses of the dead and the tree feeds on them. This originates from a short story written in 1928 by the famous writer Motojiro Kajii*. The story takes the form of a monologue by a seemingly deranged protagonist, explaining how he finally figured out this secret. * "Lemon" is another famousworkby Kajii, in which the main character places a lemon on top of a pile of art books at a bookstore as an act of revol...

Thank you for the guests kindly joined our Saturday tour on 19th of March. We totally had 27 guests from eleven countries, by four groups. It was drizzling sometime, but we had sunshine at the end of the tour. Some of our guests enjoyed our ”instant Kimono” for taking a photo. You can wear the Kimono in 30 seconds! Not always, but we bring such Kimono occasionally. By the way, do you know the fact Tokyo has islands? Last week I went to the one of such islands, Izu-Oshima. It takes two hours by s...

Thank you for joining the tour. On that day we welcomed 35 people from USA, Canada Australia, Ireland, UK, Italy, France, Germany, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Columbia. We divided into 6 groups. It was a very cold day despite middle March. In the East Garden, Ume (Plum) flowers were almost fading away. Instead, red Kanzakura (Colder-climate suited cherryblossoms) were in full bloom. The flowers entertained us in the period between Ume and white-pink cherryblossom....

Thank you for the guests kindly joined our Saturday tour on 5th of March. We totally had 32 guests from twelve countries. Spring has almost come! We have bloomed-plum-tree flower already from Jan. and also, the early-bloom cherry blossoms (kan-zakura) has been bloomed from late Feb. With warm winter in this year, it is sure the flowering season comes earlier more than usual, in addition to the global warming. In Japan, the most popular cherry blossom (Sakura) type is Somei-Yoshino. Last week, Th...

Today we welcomed guests from USA, Ukraine, Turkey, Korea, UK, Switzerland and Australia.The wind was quite cold & strong this day, and guests were shivering.. We appreciate everyonefor getting through the tour with us despite this condition. We thank our guests again for their participation, and wish everyonea wonderful stay in Japan. As for myself I had an opportunity to participate in the Imperial Palace tour on the next day. Since the Imperial Palace is next to the East Gardens of the Imperi...

Thank you for all the guests on Feb27! It was a nice weather, and luckily, we could enjoy plum and a kind of cherry blooming. In general, Cherry blosssoms bloom in late March or early April, but there are some species of winter-blooming cherry trees in the east garden. By the way, in this season, many of Japanese put on masks and one of guests asked me why. Some of them put masksfor prevention of flu or getting cold, but I think major reason isfor their pollen allergy (including me!!). Actually,...

Thank you for all the guests for joining the tour. Today we welcomed 19 Guests from Canada, Australia, Brazil, the U.K. Indonesia and Philippine. It’s a little bit cold but we can find herald the coming of spring during the tour. The early-blooming cherry trees are already flowering at the Island of cherry blossom in the East Garden. This lovely pink really fascinates us. By the way, do you know Tofu?  It is Japanese traditional food made from soybean. It's so soft and easy to break. Let me intr...

ThankyoufortheguestskindlyjoinedourtouronFeb　20. Wehad29guestsfrom10 countriessuchasU.S.A.Italy,Germany,Indonesia,Singapore, andetc. Weformed4groups , andeachgrouphadabout10peopleincludingsomeournewlyjoined tourguidemembers. Asusual,westartedtourfromTokyoStation,andendeditupattheHirakawamonGate. Unluckily,itwasrainingallthroughtheafternoon,anditwascold. Thenwetriedtotakeacoursetogetoutoftherainfromtimetotime. Therearesomesheltersonthecourse,suchasOteresthouse, Honmaru-parkresthouse. Theweatherit...

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. It was very warm day, even in the middle of winter season. We enjoyed our tour with 30 or more foreign visitors. Let me attach some photos of today’s participants. Near the rest house in the East garden of imperial palace, there are some MITSUMATA trees planted which are used as raw material of Japanese bill paper. And MITSUMATA means “pronged to three” in Japanese. Can you see the branches are forked into three in this photo? By the way, 14th Feb. is ...