Category: Traditional

Best places for hanami in Tokyo

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date April 1, 2009
1 Comment on Best places for hanami in Tokyo

Hanami means in Japanese “to see flowers”, “to enjoy flower viewing”. It is a very important tradition celebrated when trees blossom. The most important hanami of the year starts this week in Tokyo with the blossom of sakura trees (Japanese cherry trees).

The first time I saw sakura blossomed trees it was four years ago at the Izu peninsula, I was not impressed at all, there were not many trees around the area I visited. But during the next years I started appreciating the beauty of Japanese sakura blossom and the importance of hanami in Japanese society. I visited many parks and places around Tokyo, and tried to always go to new parks to enjoy sakura from different perspectives.

This week until the end of the next week is going to be the best moment to enjoy hanami in the Tokyo area. This is a map I just made with some of the places where I’ve enjoyed sakura hanami during last years, at the bottom I gave a rating to each place using sakura flower icons.

Sakura
The rating of each place are based solely on my personal opinion.

This map is only for general orientation and to know more or less which ones are the best places to go. Since there is not enough detail in the map here are the direct links to the exact location of each place recommended in the map above using Google Maps:

Ueno (There are huge sakura trees, what I don’t like is that Ueno is not really what I would say a BEAUTIFUL park)
Ichigaya y Yotsuya (Most of the sakura blossomed trees are around the Ichigaya pond)
Naka Meguro (Around the river that goes in direction to Shibuya.)
Shinjuku Gyoen (This is my favorite place for hanami in Tokyo. One of the problems of Shinjuku Gyoen is that it is always so crowded!)
Inokashira (Around the lake with the boats)
Mitsuike (It is little but there are many varieties of sakura trees with different tonalities of colors etc. It is near the Kawasaki station.
Yoyogi (It is one of my favorite parks but sakura is not its strong point. Most of the sakura trees are around the pond)

Let’s go to enjoy hanami and let’s take tons of pictures. This year I’m going to try to take a better picture than this one I took last year:

Traditional

Otoshidama and money inside envelopes

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date January 14, 2009
6 Comments on Otoshidama and money inside envelopes

Last month was the second time I have spent the end of the year in Japan (The other years I traveled overseas), and my conclusion is that nothing really “exciting” happens in Japan during the end or the beginning of the year. Celebrations are pretty calm and traditional. The common pattern I found with Europe is that Japanese also eat tons of food during the end of the year and the beginning of the year. I guess eating a lot is a common “tradition” all over the world.

During my first year I learned about the Hatsuyume, the 108 times bell hitting tradition and the beginning of the year traditional decorations..

This year I learned more about Otoshidama お年玉. It is basically money that is given by adults to kids, this is also common to many countries. But what I find interesting is the way the money is handed. It is given inside and envelope, and there are many different envelopes and designs made only to be used for Otoshidama. These are some designs I saw:

Otoshidama

Giving money inside envelopes is not only an Otoshidama thing, it is a Japanese thing. When giving money in marriages, in special celebrations, when receiving money from various expenses in the company etc the money is always given inside a “noshi” (An special type of envelope designed specially for money, it has just the perfect size to fit 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 yen bills). There are standard “noshi” envelopes, but there are also special “noshi” envelopes designed each one depending on what it is going to be used for. For example, one of the most common “noshi” envelopes are the ones used for marriages that can be found almost in any stationary shop.

In the old times when samurai received their stipend from their retainers they always received it inside and envelope. The money was considered as something “impure” and “dirty”, money was considered bad for society. And not only samurai, the society in general tried always to interchange money in the most subtle way the could. It seems that it was considered rude to talk about money, or to talk about having more money than others, or simply looking like you want to have more money (Even without reaching the level of greediness). When not having envelopes some people would also interchange money with chopsticks (I have seen this in some movies and Japanese novels).

It is interesting how the tradition of hiding “the dirty staff that corrupt our society” (the money) inside envelopes when giving money for presents or celebrations is still alive. But, on the other side Japan became one of the most savage-capitalist countries in the world, specially Tokyo, a city where one of the most common conversation subjects is money, money, money!