Umemi - part 1: Meijokoen

It is getting warmer - will be around 13C this week and 17C on Friday. Spring is coming.

One of the signs of upcoming spring is the blooming of the Japanese apricot (ume) trees.   You probably have heard of umeboshi which is a famous Japanese food - salty/sour pickled ume fruit.  I tried some and they made my mouth twist!  The ume blooming in Nagoya happens typically from middle of February to early March.  The blossoms might not be as well knows as the sakura but they are pretty in their own accord.

Thus, I set on a quest to explore this "umemi" - ume viewing.  In this post, I present part 1: going to Meijokoen (名城公園) on February 20.  I got the information from the awesome Nagoya guide by Kikuko about where to go to see ume trees.  There are lots of places listed so hopefully I will be able to see some of them in the upcoming weeks.  I selected Meijokoen since it is along the way to downtown.  So Today I biked there along this route:

As you can see, in total, that is around 24kms which was totally a bad decision having biked 40kms yesterday.  And that is why I can't sit for very long (and won't be able to bike for a while) since my tail bone hurts!  Meijokoen is that green area at the topleft right above the Nagoya Castle.  In the lower left part of the route is OSU shopping arcade where I had a tasty fish pastry (from the food post).  I then went back home along a somewhat different route.

Meijokoen is a quite nice park and there were quite a number of people there on Sunday.  This is a view of the middle of the park from nearby one of the entrances.

 Closeup on the windmill and flowers:

 
I biked around the park a few times and found around 5 blooming ume trees.  The guide listed 50 trees of 4 varieties... maybe I didn't see or perhaps some of they are not blooming yet.  However, I think I did find 4 varieties of trees so that was exciting!

First of all, this lonely tree with sparse white and pink flowers:

 Flower closeup:

I found some rose trees with white roses - I have only seen red before:

There is a large lake with big fish:

 And a nice island:

 with a nice red rose tree:

 and a cat... seems that homeless people live in the park and take care of many cats:

On the other side, I found a different ume tree with small flowers - very hard to see:

 Closeup of the smaller white flowers:

Near one of the entrances is a large building with 2 ume trees to the side.  First, one with big white flowers:

 Flower closeup and a bee already busy at work:

 Still lots of flowers not open so should look better in a week maybe:

Next to that tree was a red one with large flowers:

Closeups:

When I sat down on my bike to leave after photographing those two, a nice old lady told me I should go inside the building to see flowers and bonsai.  So I thanked her, parked my bike again and went in.  On one side, they had a display of various planted flowers - each of them very delicate looking:

 Some nice pots:

 On one side it looked like a green house with some plants:

 and a fountain:

 and some orchids:

 There were many of those potted flowers:

 On the other side were more potted flowers and some bonsai!  Look at this beautiful bonsai ume tree!

 Another one:

 Other plants:

 Quite green:

 In the middle of the building was a large flowering bush of some sort:

When I was biking away from the park, I found some ume trees near some government buildings:

That is it for now - hopefully will continue with more soon!

Nagoyan Winter and Old Ladies

So, it's the middle of December and the temperatures are still around 12C during the day and around 5C at night.  Many trees already lost their leaves but some still remain!  Here is a nice example of a nicely coloured tree on campus:

 There are a bunch of interesting trees planted in a row basically in front of the building where I have my Japanese classes.  They have almost needle like leaves that are falling down now making the ground very nice looking.

 The nice golden ginko tree is now completely naked.

 The trees along the large park on campus are still quite green.

 Nicely coloured tree on campus:

There are also some flowers still flowering in bushes in the campus park.

For Hello Kitty fans, there is a large multi part display in Central Park underground shopping mall in downtown Sakae featuring various regions of the country and special hello kitty phone straps for each region.

Sunset as seen from my office.

 Sakae now seems to have a lot of Christmas decorations.

 Yesterday, I went for a walk around the campus - to areas that I haven't been to yet.  Found a nice shrine with the red tora gates right next to the campus.

 In the man made lake on campus, there do seem to be quite big fish!

 The neighbourhood to the east of the campus has quite a number of hills.

 This is an apartment that was for rent on google maps - but the location isn't all that convenient.

 Not sure what this is...

 A bit dark, but the tree was left when building the sidewalk.

Today, I went to Ikeshita - an area around a subway station where I want to look for an apartment.  Along the way, I found some nice flowering trees and a garden with vegetables.

 A nice flower shop...

 A nice path...

An interesting event happened on my journey.  I found this small store with veggies and other stuff on a side road in Ikeshita.  I went in and bought some fruit.  But when I went in, one old lady - one of the customers - kept looking at me!  So when I paid... the cashier handed me some sweet buns from that lady and the lady said "presento".  Hmm... I don't usually get presents from old ladies... so this was kinda strange... so I thanked her a few times and left.  Felt kinda bad since maybe she wanted to talk to me but I run away so quickly... well... maybe it's a good sign to move to the neighbourhood?

hmm tasty buns... if only she was like 50 years younger... ;P