with kamide to kumade
coworker kamidesan is a shinjuku regular. shinjuku at night, with its neon jungle and seas of people, is probably the image you have in mind when you think of tokyo. kamide has a lot of images of shinjuku, as he likes to roam around there for hours, at night, with his camera, while waiting for the first train home. one day, he showed me a stack of letter size black and white pictures, mainly portraits, he had made in shinjuku over the course of a couple of years. an amazing collection, disturbing at times.
tonight he takes me and heinrich to hanazono jinja ("flower garden shrine") for the kumade festival. kumade ("bear hand") means rake (hark), used in this season to move dry leaves. for the festival, the rakes are decorated with flowers and objects refering to popular beliefs, and sold. with those special kumade you can collect luck and fortune instead of dry leaves. echt iets voor oma.
tonight is this year's third (and last) kumade festival at hanazono jinja. next year there'll be only one, and the year after two, then again three, and so on.
sets of stairs lead up to the 'flower garden' shrine, completely surrounded by shinjuku highrise. but japanese style high density design leaves not one square inch of the temple grounds underutilized. the amount of food stalls and people strolling around is staggering. and the lantern scaffolds manage to give the place a certain grandeur. the garden with the flowers might have disappeared, still it's a different world at the heart of shinjuku.
a decorated kumade and heinrich. heinrich is working for the german embassy. his one year long intensive language course was paid for by 'the german taxpayer'. he speaks japanese fluently, even understands the food vendors, and writes some kanji... che invidio!
the outside wall of the flower garden.
a warm wind blows me home - part of the summer atmosphere at the festival? twenty degrees at the end of november... feels like forty if you ask me. makes me think of the föhn in milan, the warm surprize allowing short sleeve outdoor breakfasts in december.
[seems like the föhn (scroll down for full definition) is a world wide phenomenon - and a powerful one, messing up winter olympics and creating polynyae]
tonight he takes me and heinrich to hanazono jinja ("flower garden shrine") for the kumade festival. kumade ("bear hand") means rake (hark), used in this season to move dry leaves. for the festival, the rakes are decorated with flowers and objects refering to popular beliefs, and sold. with those special kumade you can collect luck and fortune instead of dry leaves. echt iets voor oma.
tonight is this year's third (and last) kumade festival at hanazono jinja. next year there'll be only one, and the year after two, then again three, and so on.
sets of stairs lead up to the 'flower garden' shrine, completely surrounded by shinjuku highrise. but japanese style high density design leaves not one square inch of the temple grounds underutilized. the amount of food stalls and people strolling around is staggering. and the lantern scaffolds manage to give the place a certain grandeur. the garden with the flowers might have disappeared, still it's a different world at the heart of shinjuku.
a decorated kumade and heinrich. heinrich is working for the german embassy. his one year long intensive language course was paid for by 'the german taxpayer'. he speaks japanese fluently, even understands the food vendors, and writes some kanji... che invidio!
the outside wall of the flower garden.
a warm wind blows me home - part of the summer atmosphere at the festival? twenty degrees at the end of november... feels like forty if you ask me. makes me think of the föhn in milan, the warm surprize allowing short sleeve outdoor breakfasts in december.
[seems like the föhn (scroll down for full definition) is a world wide phenomenon - and a powerful one, messing up winter olympics and creating polynyae]
posted by Jan at 02:29
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