Tour Report: October 08, 2016

Thank you for all the guests joining our tour this day.
It was raining and pouring harder and harder around noon so we were wondering
if our guests have change up their mind to do in-door activity this afternoon…
Although, no matter of the bad weather, we welcomed 51 guests and it
did not even need to put up umbrella anymore at the start of our tour.
It looked like the rain has ceased for us!
We welcomed guests from Canada, Australia, U.S.A., U.K., Israel, Lebanon,
Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Chile, Brazil, Argentina,
Holland.

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Let me introduce one more attractive point worth checking at the East Garden of Imperial Palace.  It is the corner of “Symbolic prefectural trees”.
After enjoying the Ninomaru Japanese Garden, you will pass by the Suwa-tea house, and then suddenly that corner appears with a very tall phenix welcoming you swaying like a palm tree.
We have 47 prefectures in our country and you can see many species of trees representing each prefectures from south (Okinawa-ken) to the North(Hokkaido). The various species are like Japanese cedar, pine, ume tree, Japanese cypress, camphor trees, white birch, Japanese cherry tree.  On the other hand, we learn a lot from our guests at this corner too. This day our U.S.guests told us that they also have kaede/momiji(representing Hiroshima & Shiga prefecure) in their country and they are called “maple”in English.
Kaede trees have green leaves shapened like a frog’s hand with 5 fingers, and the color turns into red and yellow in November. In Canada, kaede(=maple )represents their country flag and the trees are also sapped as the well known “maple syrup”!
Another guest told us that “pine” brings him a very strict, cold climate image(like Nordic, Alaska, Russia) but Japanese pines grow in a mild climate so that he noticed there are many species in pines!  Like these stories, we love to share and also learn from our splendid guests about botanical issues as well as historical issues.

At the end of tour, the sunlight was even pouring.
Thank you for joining us this miracle day!!

(Posted by: Noriko)