Flowers From Tokyo [ Panasonic GX7 ]

Today it is March 10th, 2014. It is just one day away from being the third anniversary of the Earthquake that hit northeastern Japan.

Today, on the anniversary tomorrow, and for the next few days I plan on posting about what happened then, reflections on the three years that have passed since the earthquake and tsunami, and nuclear disaster started.




Saturday I went with a friend on an unusual adventure around Tokyo. We started at Tokyo Station (now restored to its original prewar awesomeness), and headed on a journey across town. Our first main stop was to head into the Imperial Palace. Here are some of the pictures I took there.




Just inside the main gate is this building, which used to be a barracks for 100 samurai retainers of the shogun (yes, 100!). There isn't a whole lot to the palace now - not that you can see anyway. Yes, you can get reservations to see the at collection, but what was once here, Edo Castle, symbol and seat of power for the shogunate for 300 years, is now mostly gone.

So rather than focus on the stone walls and few remaining structures, I would like to instead focus on the beautiful blooming flowers you can see inside.

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A few blossoms open on a branch.




Despite the lingering cold, life is coming back to Japan little by little.




More blossoms hang down from branches above, the fragrance of real spring all about.




A bloom here, a bud there, opens with the light and brief warmth of March. The three years since 3.11 we've had a succession of long, cold winters. That year we had spring as normal, but since then things seem to be a bit off kilter, like the planet itself is struggling to get right again.




Here is a shot of the path through the palace grounds down to the outer walls. It's amazing to see such a huge area sitting like this in the middle of the world's biggest metropolis.




All through the palace you have different kinds of flowers layered in waves - white, red, then later pink and other flowers bloom out in succession.




Light shines down through gaps in the trees above. Here you can see a few flowers growing from trees alongside the remnants of the Edo Castle's main tower.




More flowers spring out on branches all around.




Here is a view looking down from the walls of the main tower. Edo Castle became the Imperial Castle after the end of the shogunate, but the main tower had long since been lost to fire in the 17th century, and more fires and rebuilding changed the shape of the palace and grounds several times. The current palace sits on a site on the premises but in a different location.

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OK, to be completely honest I don't know if this visit really had much to do with the earthquake that happened three years ago. But looking around the palace grounds and seeing the flowers in bloom, you get a feeling of the strength of humanity, the ability of people to recover. Yes, the old castle is long gone, but the structure remains underneath.

And there has been loss and recovery, fires and wars and disaster, but life goes on and we rebuild and rebuild every time. And we hope that each new disaster will be smaller, that we learn from what happened before.




For more information about the palace and castle, I would say your best bet is to just head over to Wikipedia page for Edo Castle.

And for more about the disaster and my thoughts on Japan post 3.11 please come back tomorrow.