The tank the oldtimers are fishing from, they tell me, is just like the ones once used to store and soak logs that were then peeled, like rolls of wrapping paper, to produce wood veneers.
Here, mature landscaping includes ponds, pines, boulders, tortuous streams, and fields of lush yoshi reeds swaying soporifically. A sign, oddly positioned in a marsh, prohibits unauthorized sleeping in the park.
I move on before giving in to an illegal lull. Heading East, I find the Yokojukken River, an Edo canal dating from and named for its width of 10 ken, or about 18 meters.
Rowing teams feathering over the river surface, cyclists navigating the undulating path, and the faint tang of salt in the air draws me south, toward where the Yokojukken intersects with the Onagi River. Further downriver, I pass a water-control lock, and, just beyond, a landing stage of squat paddle boats tended by men in broad-brimmed jute hats.
Here and there, the waterway is posted with statues of kappa, mischievous water sprites said to be fond of eating cucumbers and children.
The figures warn would-be bathers that, though the Yokojukken runs a mere 1. The boys rinse out plastic aquariums for their feisty speckled invaders.
I pass a launch area where local volunteers pilot a fleet of six traditional wooden Japanese boats offering free river rides, but only on Wednesdays, in fine weather, between 10 a. As I make my way back toward Sumiyoshi, I zigzag west and north, passing welding factories, steel plants and construction crews lounging in the late afternoon light.
A friend has given me the workshop address of a lacquerware artist, and in an alley too narrow for a car, I locate master craftsman Hitoshi Maeda. Contact with urushi, or an exudate milked from the Toxicondendrum vernicifluum tree from which lacquer is made, causes violently itchy skin rashes and can provoke fatal allergic reactions. Apparently, even breathing the vapors, which smell pleasant to me, can set off a severe reaction in some. I begin to measure my breaths.
Regaining his composure, Maeda explains that lacquer must be applied in multiple layers of varying viscosity, some of pure lacquer and others mixed with clay or ash, then polished with different abrasives between each layer.
A little care, and it will long outlast your grandkids. Maeda began training with his father from age 15, learning not by words but by watching. I ask Maeda how long it took before he felt himself qualified to perform the most challenging skill of his craft, the final polishing of a lacquer piece. Pulling out wooden boxes storing some of his finest works, Maeda gingerly hands me a featherweight, baby soft bowl in lambent black lacquer.
Behind such works of art, Maeda tells me, there are many professionals — those who procure the lacquer, those who create the substrates, or wafer-thin wood bases for the pieces, and those who paint or apply designs later.
Hoping to find traces of the fishing village that was Edo present-day Tokyo before the first Tokugawa Shogun chose the site for his new political capital in the early s, I head to Gyoranzaka Fish-basket Slope in the city's central Mita district. I don't expect Inspired by this summer's Olympic quest for gold medals, I opt to go for the gold myself. Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo's northwestern Nerima Ward is home to Carousel El Dorado, one of the world's oldest hand-carved wooden merry-go-rounds.
Named for an imaginary city The neighborhood of Mukogaoka — literally, "Yonder Hill" — huddles under clouds clustered like violet hydrangea blossoms the morning I arrive to explore. From Hon-Komagome Station on the Nanboku subway line, I head east with a cautious eye skyward through a rust belt of shuttered The Yanesen district of central Tokyo, whose name features bits of the names of the three neighborhoods it comprises Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi , charms visitors with its temple-studded streets, craft shops and prewar architecture.
Oddly, though, maps in either Japanese or English rarely guide Rising amid flat farmland, Asukayama had long been an untended haunt of foxes and their small prey when, in , Yoshimune Tokugawa, the eighth shogun to rule in Edo present-day Tokyo , had the hilly upland planted with 1, cherry trees, maples and Whether you call the Prunus mume a plum or an apricot it is related to both , the flowers are plum elegant on their leafless, shiny branches and help cheer us through winter's finale.
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