Nihonbashi Park Garden and Helpful Cat

We ultimately choose side streets and byways when on one of our urban hikes. The main streets can be quite interesting, but more often than not it's the small streets that yield the most wonderful surprises. (Like vegetables!) Nihonbashi in September was no different.

After the first great garden followed by the coffee shop green curtain, we found a sweet little park with this flower garden at the entrance. Absolutely full of blooms in a vast array of pots and buzzing with bees and bumbling butterflies, I wandered about in this roughly 2m by 6m space for a good twenty minutes taking photos and savoring every color and texture. It also helped that a very friendly cat came over to act as my guide, too. I was quite grateful.

Nihonbashi Green Curtain

Green curtains seem to be all the rage during the summer months here, and they make perfect sense. Some are perennial, some annual, some edible, and some ornamental, but all serve the same purpose: to provide much-desired shade from the raging heat.

While strolling in Nihonbashi and just after spotting another great sidewalk garden, we gravitated over to this big curtain. All starting from an array of small pots, these vines climbed up, over and around the structure to very effectively shade the doorway and coffee shop interior. If we'd not just had a huge lunch we would have stopped in for a cup of something at one of the cool, sunlight dappled tables inside.

September Sidewalk Near Nihonbashi

I have to confess I've got no great excuse for not posting more here, except the usual busy-ness of life. Farming, gardening, writing, traveling, with a dash of Japanese study thrown in for good measure have kept me occupied these past months. My other blog, Popcorn Homestead, documented some of those adventures in detail, which means this one stood neglected.

Fall's arrival with cooler temperatures and a slower pace at the farm and garden opened a window of opportunity for me to sit down again and sift through any number of photos. Even though I wasn't writing much about them, gardens large and small kept appearing and I kept taking pictures. Resistance is futile.

Strolling the streets in September with one of our visitors, we came across this lovely sidewalk garden. Near the original heart of Tokyo - Nihonbashi - the neighborhood is the usual mix of old and new, but like Yanaka it retains a strong flavor of the old. This garden offered green respite splashed with bits of purple, red, orange and yellow in a bustling commercial part of town. Even though autumn had officially arrived, it was still quite warm that day. We savored our colorful time in the shade.

I'm not sure of the name of the purple flower, but it's vine ascends up the pole behind it nearly as to the top of the second story. I've been seeing them quite alot recently, and it might be a new favorite. An array of pots ran along the side, and recent work must have been underway as the yellow trowel handle illustrates. Or the gardener is like me and just leaves it there for the next workday.