I had a very nice couple of hours in Koishikawa Korakuen yesterday. For those of you who don't know, it is an Edo Period garden next to Tokyo Dome. According to the guide pamphlet, it was started in 1629 by the founder of the Tokugawa family, Yorifusa, and was completed during the reign of the second clan ruler, Mitsukuni. Mitukuni admired Chinese culture and the name of the garden, Korakuen, means "the garden for enjoying power later on". He took this name from the Chinese text, "Gakuyoro-Ki", by Hanchuen, in which it says "There is a need for those in power to worry about maintaining power first and then enjoy power later."

Nowadays, it should really be called something like "the garden for getting away from crazy Tokyo on a Sunday afternoon". That's what I was doing, though I nearly didn't get there, because at first it seemed like the only way to the park from the nearest station was over a series of hideous pedestrian footbridges that my vertigo would never allow me to stagger over. Finally, after twenty frustrating minutes of wandering up and down around Idabashi Station, I managed to find a couple of zebra crossings that allowed me to get there entirely on ground level.

I spent a couple of happy hours there taking photos. The light was fantastic and I was excited to find an expanse of shallow water with stepping stones, koi carp and a duck. The reflections were great and the duck was friendly (or maybe just hungry) and came swimming over. There was also a brilliant red wooden bridge that stood out from the foliage and the surrounding rocks. I took quite a lot of pictures of that. Hidden away in some of the darker corners of the garden, I stumbled across some quite mysterious-looking monuments, inscribed stones and what appeared to be the ruins of a tiny shrine - only the foundations and some ancient stone lanterns and lion carvings remained. I also scored my first mosquito bite of the season.

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Earthquake update - over the last week, the aftershocks have started up again and then gone away again. Today, a friend of mine informed me that she had seen a TV show on the most dangerous areas of Tokyo to live in if "The Big One" hits, (or as she said, "WHEN the Big One hits"). Apparently, the most dangerous area is Koto, followed by Wakaba, and the most dangerous floor to live on is the third floor. I live in a third-floor apartment in Wakaba. Great. I told her this, and she quickly amended her comment by saying that it was only dangerous to live on the third floor if there were six floors in your building in total (there are four in mine) and that it was all the old bunka-jitaku (semi-detached houses from just after the war) that were dangerous. Wakaba is extra dangerous because of the very narrow streets. This area used to have a ninja school here, and the streets were as slim as possible to make it hard for the school to be attacked.

My final news for today is that I have bought a cactus. I am infamous for killing plants, but I saw this little cactus with flowers on it and figured that if it could survive the desert, then it could probably surprise me. If it lives long enough for me to get round to photographing it, I'll post a picture of its pretty flowers.