Monthly Archives: June 2025

Kamakura Stroll Garden

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On the extensive grounds of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura – or maybe a separate entity adjacent to the shrine, it wasn’t quite clear – was a garden that managed to sport flowers in mid-February.Kamakura Japan

Part of the gardeners’ strategy seemed to be tepee-like straw structures over the blooms, many of them ‘mid the garden stones.Kamakura Japan Kamakura Japan Kamakura Japan

There must be a word for that sort of cover. In English or Japanese or some other language, and it must work somehow, though speaking as a non-gardener, it doesn’t look like it would keep cold air out. The area is roughly the same latitude as Nashville or Oklahoma City, certainly far enough north for some chilly winter days, though presumably the ocean off Kamakura moderates temps somewhat in Kamakura. Anyway, it does get cold there, as this detailed climate page notes.

Or maybe the growing season is longer than it used to be. Whatever could be the cause of that?

Not every floral growth was covered.Kamakura Japan

Even without flowers, the place made for a pleasant stroll in an elegant setting.Kamakura Japan Kamakura Japan Kamakura Japan

What would a kaiyushiki teien, a stroll garden, be without bamboo?Kamakura Japan

Or a stone lantern?Kamakura Japan

After we strolled the garden, we made our way to the Kamakura Daibutsu, the Big Buddha, a bronze of many tons that somehow makes you think about impermanence. As February days go, the one in Kamakura was top-notch.

Scenes from Osaka Castle Park

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In Chinese city parks during our visit in 1994, it was fairly common to see (mostly) elderly men out for a walk with their birds. Their songbirds in cages, that is, which the men carried along with them and would hang somewhere nearby while they rested on benches. This article at least asserts that the practice goes back to the Qing Dynasty, which was founded in 1644. I’d never seen such a thing before anywhere else, and not since, until we visited Osaka Castle Park in February.

Note the fellow in the blue jacket and blue hat, near one of the former castle walls, with birds perched on his head and shoulders. He seemed to be out for a stroll with his birds.Osaka-jo Koen

They were living, chirping birds that would periodically fly away, but they would also come back. The bird at the left bottom corner of the image was one of his as well, tethered to a string he’s grasping with his hand. Guess that was a bird in training.Osaka-jo Koen

Of course, Japan is not China, however much the Japanese borrowed from China in earlier centuries. Bird walking wasn’t one of those borrowings, so I believe this man and his birds were eccentric outliers who eschewed cages for freedom of movement. Still, the level of training is impressive. It’s one thing to train the birds to return – carrier pigeons do that – but do they know to go somewhere else when it’s time to drop a load? I’d hope so, but I don’t know whether that is possible.

Even in winter, Osaka Castle Park (Osaka-jo Koen, 大阪城公園) is a pleasant place to stroll. We didn’t enter the castle itself, where we’d both been a few times before, but took in some nice views of it.Osaka-jo Koen Osaka-jo Koen Osaka-jo Koen

Many of the trees are plums. They are the first to blossom, and we could see the very beginnings of buds, but we were too early for full flowering.Osaka-jo Koen Osaka-jo Koen Osaka-jo Koen

Later, peach and cherries blossom in the park, though the place to see cherry blossoms in Osaka without the crowds in 1990s – and there were always crowds in the large parks, including the grounds of the Japan Mint – was Osaka Gogoku Shrine in Suminoe Ward. I’ll bet it still is.

Japanese Food

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Take a pork cutlet, a nice thin one but not too thin, dredge a bit in flour, dip in beaten egg, coat with panko, and deep fry in light oil. Serve sliced so that the pieces are easier to manage with chopsticks, and with a brown Worcestershire-y sauce (but better, I think). Add a bed of lettuce, and sides of rice, miso and Japanese pickles.

A modest dish, but there’s nothing quite like a good tonkatsu. It is an example of salaryman food. Of course, other people eat it – a lot in my case, since the happy day sometime in 1990 when I had it for the first time. But in the lunchtime domain of male office workers in dense Osaka, the Kitchen of Japan, tonkatsu is a familiar regular (and in other parts of the country, too). They are little works of fragrant and delicious art whose purpose is to be eaten for the pocket money that their wives allow them for lunches.

Naturally, I sought it out during my recent days in Japan. This one is before the application of sauce. It’s the legacy of a Japanese adaptation of a European, specifically French dish, back in the 19th century. A detail from the Meiji era.

Another popular adaptation in Japan, spotted among the office towers near Osaka Castle. Doughnuts have long had a home in Japan.Time to Eat Donut

Yes. It was time.

Another day, during a solo wander in the streets near Midosuji Blvd., I took rest at a small coffee shop, part of a large chain.

Doutor Coffee has some 1,200 locations in East Asia, with a concentration of 900 or so in Japan and others in Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. I expect most of them are franchised locations, and many are along underground pedestrian ways near subways or train stations. Mine was so close to a subway station entrance, you could hear the soft beeping of the electronic tickets and the slightly louder clank of the turnstiles if you decided to pay attention.

Mostly, the place was quiet, with people setting themselves in front of their laptops or fiddling with their phones. I joined the laptop users, pecking out emails or parts of whatever article was due next.

Considering the strong dollar (in February, anyway), the tab for milk tea and a warm chocolate croissant came in less than double digits in US dollar terms. But a refreshing beverage and a tasty snack are only part of the deal: you’re also renting a place to sit.

But not a place to smoke anymore. I was a little surprised, considering how consistently tobacco smoke used to linger, or sometimes billow and swirl, in public spaces in Japan 30+ years ago. That shift oddly reminded me of visits to Preservation Hall in 1981 and 1989 (minus the jazz, of course). The first time, the jazzmen played in a room lightly clouded with smoke. Eight years later, the air was clear.