Deep friend anything: the Spring of my Life

Spring sun, blossoms and all manner of seafood in Tokyo

Apr 04, 2023

First let me apologise, for yesterday’s “deep friend pork” fiasco which I understand caused a great deal of pearl clutching in a number of time zones. I assure you nothing of that sort will happen again and, to be sure, I have resolved to stay off the pork for the foreseeable. A diet of fugu, Calpis and wanko soba should avoid any risk of malapropism.

Next, I wish to introduce you, as I was introduced today, to some of the finest trees in Tokyo.

Stepping out into silent streets on a bright blue day, and after a bowl of soba and a cup of the water they cook it in, we passed by the station kōban (police box) a gnarled tree of some description, tall and old but surpassed in just about all measures by the younger, glossier saplings around it.

I watch the gnarled tree
And it watches the watchmen -
But who watches me?

On the way towards the Japan Football Museum (up Football Avenue) we met our first daytime clump of slowly shedding sakuras and we’re moved, of course, to reflect on the transience of all things.

Up some stone steps we arrived at what I thought was the famous Kanda shrine but turned out to be the loveliest public toilets I’ve ever seen. Cherry trees, half-blossom, half-leaf, with tiny chirping birds bouncing about and, in sending petals to the earth, doing the spring’s work for it. Some maple trees with their red fingers, as if autumn never ended. Green gloss. Old wood. Quiet. An old lady gave us a game “goo’ moaning” and an anime-style overreaction when we “ohayō gozaimasu”-ed her back

As we made our way along to the shrine proper - being exaggeratedly polite to pensioners, who were exaggeratedly polite to us - we came upon a tall bamboo grove, whose straining, reaching tops had come to intermingle with the drooping branches of the late cherries:

Blossoms and bamboo
Protect me from what’s to come -
Clasped hands at the shrine

Then to the shrine, which might as well have been a film set: swooping Chinese eaves, shimmering patinas on black-green tiles, moss covered Buddhas and, floating down in the midst of it all, pink petals; they might’ve reminded you of the moths of summer or the first soft snow, according to taste or disposition. The drums of the shrine tell the passing of all things.

And so to coffee. And another. Still 7.30. Nav left me for a snooze and I hit the second hand book shops of Jimbōchō in search of a saijiki, a dictionary of seasonal words for use in haiku. I was too successful: for about £30 I could have had five ancient volumes (one each for spring, summer, autumn, winter and new year) if - and I wasn’t - I was prepared to lug them around. Instead I was able to get a more modern, less comprehensive one with seasonal words and relevant verse.

Sunburnt in the rising heat of the day and the exposure of the Imperial Palace gardens, having seen the trees sent by each prefecture (and see below for the rhododendrons sent from Fukuoka, my old place), and the expectant carp, we got down to the important business of lunch (sashimi bowl), napping, sake drinking and deep fried everything-but-pork, joined by my gorgeous school friend Marie, and her new love.