Azaleas and peonies in Tokyo
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April 18, 2014 - Azaleas and peonies in Tokyo
In late April in Tokyo, the cherry blossoms have more or less ended, but some others flowers start to bloom.
Azaleas can also be very beautiful. In central Tokyo, the best place is Nezu shrine, just near Yanaka.
As usual, the grounds of the shrine are free, but a small fee is asked for the garden.
The garden is made on an hill, with some houses above it, and the shrine below. Several path divide the place, making look bigger than it is.
The borrowed landscape of the nice houses or the torii path make an interesting contrast with the flowers.
The best thing with azaleas is the various colors, especially here where the shrubs are small, so you can see a lot of them in one look. This make the place even better than Villa Calotta, which is one of the best place for azaleas in Europe.
Even if the garden is small, it has several paths, so I was able to discover several point of views.
Here is one video of the place:
https://youtu.be/nIuAgDaS_-I
Nezu shrine is just near Yanaka, so I visited both in one shot.
It is especially near Tsuyuki-san's puppets shop,where you can see him making them.Unfortunately I was alone, so I didn't see the puppets show he makes for 4 or 5 people.
Some days before, I have seen an add in the subway for a peonies exposition at Toshogu shrine in Ueno.It was a nice place to finish the visits for the day, especially as I had my hotel nearby.
As it is a special exposition, I paid a small fee for entering.
Many peonies were protected by a Japanese umbrella, making the place very beautiful.
Contrary to cherry or azaleas, peonies are best viewed with flowers isolated. The shrine had many different type of flowers, of many colors.
It should be noted that it is possible to see both the shrine and the exposition with a bundle ticket, but as I already visited the shrine before, I just took the exposition ticket.
Peony's attraction isn't beautiful landscape like with cherry blossoms or azaleas, but about the beauty of one single flower.
Many different peony were visible, well justifying the small entrance fee.
It should be noted that both places weren't crowed at all, it was about 5 peoples in the same time during my visits.
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List of Posts:
2014/04/18 - Azaleas and peonies in Tokyo 2014/04/15 - Haradani-en, Nishijin Textile Center and Fushimi Inari Taisha 2014/04/05 - Takehara and Kure |
