Our Japanese Adventure: April 5, 2012

Yes, I've fallen behind again. It's been sakura season here, so it's been a little busy with going to see cherry blossoms and having people over because we have a cherry tree in our backyard.

On April 5, I had the opportunity to join a Meguro River walking tour. The tour met at Shibuya Station, which is about a half hour walk from my apartment. From there we took the Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line to Ikejiriohashi station. From the station we walked to the Meguro River. The Meguro River is lined with cherry trees, which were in bloom. It was quite the sight, and I took a bunch of pictures. Really, how many pictures of cherry trees does one need? I'm going to have to be selective and just put a couple in the blog, but I'm not sure how I'll pick them. (The other reason I've fallen behind is the sheer volume of pictures. I took about 70 pictures on this tour.)

At the start of our walk

We walked down the river towards Naka Meguro, stopping at pretty much every overpass to look at the blossoms and take pictures. Most of the cherry trees pictured are Yoshino Cherry trees, the most common variety. On one bridge a Japanese woman with three small dogs was holding them up one at a time to take a picture of them with the cherry trees in the background. I offered to take a picture of her with all three of her dogs. I didn't have any idea how to say it in Japanese, but you can get pretty far with hand gestures.

One of the bridges -
this one was pedestrian and bike only

Businesses who help sponsor the festival get their name on
some of the lanterns. This was a nearby Italian restaurant.
At night, the lanterns are illuminated.

At one point (the red bridge pictured above) we detoured away from the river to visit Sugekari Koen, which was a grassy park with a separate Japanese garden. Here our tour guide passed out cherry blossom cookies (good) and some kind of gummy cherry candy (not good). Our guide said she had bought the treats from a grocery store at Meguro Station, from where I was going to depart to head back home. I picked up some of the cookies to share with the kids, but I stayed away from the gummy candy.

In the Japanese garden

Weeping cherry tree in the Japanese garden

Turtles sunning themselves in the river

This seemed very Japanese to me -
hide some construction with a picture of cherry trees.

There were many shops and cafes lining the river. As we were there on a weekday morning, it was fairly quiet, but I imagine that is not the case later in the day and on the weekends. As we walked, our tour guide also pointed out Naka Meguro Koen (park) and the River Museum. The River Museum is free, which makes it a good destination for later with the kids.

A few more cherry blossom pictures (I asked Greer to help me pick four; she couldn't get it below five):

Some time after passing Naka Meguro Station, we reached Meguro Dori (street). At this point we turned away from the river and visited some temples/shrines in the area, the main one being Meguro Fudosan. This was definitely a good part of the tour to NOT have the kids. Temples and shrines are not their favorite things.

A few random pictures from the temple/shrine portion of the tour: