Inkan / Hanko

Sometimes when I am getting prepared to travel, I read books about wherever I am headed to get myself psyched up or in the mood or whatever you want to call it to ensure that I'm good and ready for what I'm about to discover wherever I happen to be heading. Most often, these books are non-fiction and centered around some theme of the trip that I am about to take. It could be the history of the Incan people before heading to Peru or a book about surfing before landing in Hawaii or an account of trying to save a population of scarlet macaws before visiting Belize.

To get ready for this year's trip to Japan, I read Will Ferguson's Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan, a late 1990s account of the author's quest to hitchhike all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido while following the blooming of the cherry blossoms (or sakura) from south to north of the country. Appropriate, right? I mean, we went to Tokyo this year to see the sakura, although admittedly without the hitchhiking. 

No hitchhiking on vacation. Except in Germany. And then only once. And it really wasn't hitchhiking. I was offered a ride and I accepted.

At one point in the book, Will gets arrested (hitchhiking is illegal in certain places in Japan like on highway entrance ramps) and taken to a police station where he is ultimately released with a written warning which he is required to sign. Will's account of that simple signature act in his book reads as follows:

The older officer typed out an arrest report on his word processor, gave me a copy, and asked me to sign it. When I pulled out an inkan instead, he raised an eyebrow. The Japanese do not sign things. When they formalize an agreement, cash checks, draw up contracts, or hand in office reports, they use inkans, little sticks with their names carved on one end. They use these to stamp their imprint on the paper in red ink. Some are made of cut stone, or even ivory, but most inkans are plain bamboo.

Whoa. Whoa! Whoa!! Whoa!!! WHOA!!!! What is this? An inkan? What??? Never heard of one of these before but I definitely for sure absolutely need one for my own. I mean, I HAVE to have one. They still make these things, right? 

Checks internet immediately...they do still make them. 

I'm getting one.

Hanko Land, Shinagawa City, Tokyo.

Apparently inkans are a thing in Japan. Like a big, major deal. Emperors and Shoguns (or is the plural of Shogun just Shogun?) have had them. Celebrities have had them. Regular people have them. They show up on Japanese money. They are a seriously serious part of modern life that people in Japan have to have. I needed one too. Even though I have no part in modern Japanese life, really.

So, I know what you are thinking: where does one get an inkan made while on vacation? Don't these things take a while to get fabricated? I have a whole series of stamps that I use (or I guess "used" is a better word) to sign and seal construction documents as a professional architect and those took a week or so to come back from the stamp shop or wherever our office used to order them from after we submitted a request and payment. Can you really get an inkan while you are on vacation in Tokyo for a week? 

Of course, the answer is "yes". Why would I even be writing this post if it wasn't? Inkans are sometimes called hankos (in fact, the more common name for these little personal, official seals may actually be "hanko" rather than "inkan") and if you want a hanko made up quick-like, head to Hanko Land (I mean...where else?). It's located in Shinagawa City in southern Tokyo. They make them in an hour. An hour!!! 

Pick the style of hanko that you want (I will after this point just refer to these things as "hanko"s since we bought ours at Hanko Land). Pick the material. Pick the exact characters that you want to appear on your official seal and an hour or so later...BOOM! Your very own hanko.

Choices, choices, choices. Inside Hanko Land.

Now...I thought long and hard about what I wanted on my hanko before we set off for Japan. This was a complicated exercise. Bear with me for a couple of paragraphs.

The Japanese system of writing has no alphabet which is analogous to the English alphabet. Traditional Japanese kanji writing uses a series of symbols which correlate to specific words (so there maybe kanji character for "house" and another for "person") rather than having words made up of individual letters as we think of words being constructed in English. To accommodate new words in their language (like words imported from other languages), the Japanese have a phonetic-based writing called katakana, which allows construction of words using syllables. 

I am confident I have probably butchered the meaning of kanji and katakana but that's the best way I can articulate both systems of writing. I'm hoping I'm at least 85% correct.

When it comes to getting hankos made (and let's fact it, most tourists, including me, buy these things as souvenirs), westerners usually get steered into getting a hanko made for them that spells out their first name phonetically using katakana. Sometimes, they get their English name added to the hanko so you can see the Japanese phonetic spelling and know exactly what the characters sound like. Hanko Land calls this multi-lingual hanko a dual hanko.

Hanko case and pouch...

I didn't want that. I wanted something written solely in kanji. And to do that, I figured I'd get a hanko that represented my last name which is made up of two actual words ("hop" and "wood" if you don't know me) stacked vertically on top of one another. I did some research on the internet, found words that closely represent the words "hop" and "wood", screenshotted them from my computer and then just took them with me on my phone to Hanko Land.

It worked! The result is the cover picture of this post and the pictures immediately above and below this section.

Now, technically, I think my hanko says "jump wood" or "bounce wood" or "leap wood" since there is really no kanji character which represents "hop" as a distinct and separate action from jump or leap or bounce or spring up. I'm OK with that. We learned a long time ago (in Iceland of all places) that the English language has far more words that mean approximately the same thing as similar other words than any other language. I'm chalking this situation up to that theory. It still means Hopwood to me. I love this thing.

So what am I going to do with a small piece of maple wood bearing a kanji approximation of my last name other than keep it in its very cool carrying case with integral red ink stamp pad which fits so neatly into the embroidered fabric pouch that came free with my purchase? I don't know exactly and it doesn't really matter. I know I already said this but I love this thing. I feel like I have something exclusively Japanese even if I can't use it in quite the same way people in Japan use it.

Why I have a hanko is way less important to me than what I am going to do with it for the rest of my life. I'll find uses.

For the record, so far I've stamped every book I've read in 2025 in the upper right of the first page with my hanko and I also used it to stamp the anniversary card I gave my wife instead of signing my name. As far as I'm concerned, I never have to sign anything again, although the law of the United States and financial institutions may differ on that opinion.

...with hanko and integral stamp pad inside. How freaking cool is this???

But that's not the whole story. This story isn't complete without mentioning Fumikazu "Bun" Matsuzaki. He's the greatest person we met in Japan on this trip.

To get to Hanko Land, we took the subway to Ōimachi Station and then walked a few blocks in the rain, heads down to stay as dry as possible (this was before we bought umbrellas on this trip). When we reached Hanko Land it appeared that its storefront filled the entire width of the building we were entering so we assumed we'd be stepping into a full-size store when we slid open the entrance door and crossed the threshold. 

Sliding doors in Japan are also a thing. I'm assuming it's a space issue.

What we found instead on the other side of the sliding door was a store maybe five feet deep (maybe...) with a small counter at the far end (maybe eight feet from us) with Bun Matsuzaki standing behind it. Bun is the third generation owner of Hanko Land and on a rainy Tuesday afternoon he was waiting in his store for us. He got us hooked up with what we needed (two hankos) and told us to come back in about 90 minutes and they would be ready. 

I know I said earlier there's an hour turn around time but we were buying two hankos here so it's actually 45 minutes per hanko. Payment? When we come back.

We got back like right on the 90 minute dot. We ate lunch and were just out of other stuff to do. We hoped his time promise was good.

It was. He was ready. 

Here's the hanko. Here's the case. The gold dot on the hanko is the top of the seal; the red dot is the bottom. Use one or the other to guide placement. The case is a right handed case and the part of the clasp with the grooves in it is the part you open with your right thumb. Make sure you hold it the right way up or the hanko will fall out. Need a pouch for your case? That's free. Pick one. Want to know more about Japanese printmaking? A book for that purpose is also free, along with the ability to create a couple of DIY multicolored seal pictures using part of Bun's collection (his work - making things to print - is also his hobby).

Along the way with all this, Bun asked our names, where we were from, how we found Hanko Land, what did we know about wood block printing and can he take our pictures for his wall. We told him everything, including that we knew pretty much nothing about wood block printing. He didn't mind.

We figured we'd need a spare stamp pad. That's also free. BUT...you have to play a game first and you have to win.

As it turns out, Bun is not just a professional hanko-maker and hobbyist printmaker. He also collects vintage, mid-20th century Japanese toys. You know, the kind they used to make before batteries came with things or before video displays connected to the internet. And for us to get a spare stamp pad for the price of "on the house", Bun wanted to play a game. A game from the middle of last century.

He reached into his back room and pulled out a toy dohyo (or sumo ring) complete with temple roof (sumo contests originated in Shinto shrines a long time ago) and four rikishi (or sumo wrestlers) with different colored wamashi (it's the belt around their waist and privates). We picked a rikishi, he picked a slightly smaller rikishi, he removed the temple roof because it would be in the way, and he showed us how to play.

The object (just like in sumo) is to toss your opponent out of the dohyo. To do that, you need to use your fingers to make the dohyo move and vibrate to topple your rival's rikishi (and likely your own). First contest? A draw. Both fell out of the ring. Second contest? We lost. Third contest? Also a loss. At which point Bun clarified that he intended to play until we won and he could give us more free stuff. Which we eventually did and he eventually did. 

Stamp pad secured...we left Hanko Land for good. Although we saw Bun one more time when he ran down the street to give us some red bean paste buns. Random, I know. But the point here is he wanted us to have more Japanese culture. The buns from Bun were great.

The toy dohyo. Note the containers for water and salt in the corner of the toy, just like in a real tournament.

We went to Hanko Land to buy a couple of souvenir stamps with our names (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) on them. We got all that, along with a whole lot of free swag that we didn't expect. 

But what we also got was a crash course in Japanese printmaking and a glimpse into Japanese toy making history that we could not honestly have found anywhere else in the city if we had looked for it. Meeting Bun was an extraordinary experience. I highly recommend anyone going to Tokyo and wanting an authentic, personalized Japanese souvenir head to Hanko Land for a hanko (or inkan). What you will get is so much more than what you will pay for. 

I am super thrilled with my hanko. But I'm way more thrilled that I got to spend 20 minutes or so with Bun-san learning from him about everything he told us. I hope the picture of us turned out just great and he's got us up on his wall along with a bunch of other past customers from what looks like all over the world. Now I just need to find more uses for this hanko. I'm going to need that spare stamp pad at some point.

Me and Bun-san. With the winning and losing rikishi.

Ramen

 

The last time I spent a week or more in Japan, I came home and wrote an almost unconscionably long post about all the food we ate: gyoza, sushi, French pastries, okonomiyaki, convenience store food, Japanese omelets, so much more. Japan is a food paradise, with so many incredibly delicious types of food which are (with the possible exception of high-end sushi omakase meals) mostly super cheap and abundantly available. I'd rather eat in that country than any other place I've ever visited. Greece was maybe close, but maybe not so much at all now that I've just visited Japan.

I am not going to write a giant, comprehensive food post to wrap up our 2025 Tokyo trip. Part of the reason I'm not going to do that is because the trip was shorter and we didn't quite get to the full range of food types we would have liked to have sampled. But the larger reason is we decided to spend more time this trip focusing on one of Japan's most famous dishes: ramen. And I AM going to write a blog post about that.

Chicken ramen, Tokyo.

Let's get some ugly truth out of the way right away, shall we? Before I visited Japan in 2017, I had never eaten a bowl of ramen. I'm serious. Not a one. Not even instant. 48 years old and not a single bowl of the stuff. Not even in college when my fellow students were possibly eating Maruchan Ramen and Cup O' Noodles as about the cheapest form of sustenance they could find. I was utterly and blissfully unaware of the existence of ramen.

Shall we talk about more dirty truths? And this one may be a little more scandalous...ramen is not really a Japanese dish. Seriously. Shocked? Those ramen shops you see all over Tokyo and other cities all over Japan? Not using noodles that were invented in country. The broth tradition might have been developed over the better part of two centuries in Japan. But not the noodles. No sir, no way! The noodles are Chinese all the way. Like mid or late 19th century Chinese.

Now you might be thinking here...am I telling you that the Japanese didn't have noodles until they started importing Chinese-made ramen in the 1800s? No, I am not. Udon and soba noodles were developed in Japan. But ramen noodles, which are made with lye water, are a Chinese invention. And while there may be one-off stories of individual Japanese people partaking in Chinese ramen dishes all the way back to about the year 1700, the large scale introduction of ramen to Japan started in 1858, when Japan eliminated a 200 year old ban on foreign visitation and opened its ports to the world for trade and foreign relations. And part of that trade involved the importation of Chinese ramen noodles. And Chinese cooks. Japan was ready for the birth of ramen.

Reconstruction of the restaurant Rairaiken, Japan's first ramen shop.

The demand for ramen dishes in Japan was initially driven by the nation's Chinese immigrant population, most of them students sent to study in Japan. With Chinese people came a desire for Chinese food, including noodle dishes. As noodles were made and shared in Japan, the knowledge of how to make Chinese noodle dishes started to spread beyond the Chinese community. 

In 1910, Japan's first ramen shop, Rairaiken, was opened in the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo. The owner was Japanese but the 13 cooks he hired were all Chinese. Finally ramen was available to anyone who could afford to spend a little money and buy a bowl. But the dish was still very much Chinese in flavor and conception. 

Then in the 1920s, the first ramen shop in Hokkaido was opened by a man named Shoji Ohisa to sell noodles to the 180 or so students enrolled at Hokkaido University. Ohisa started to work with his Chinese cook to make a lighter broth of pork and scallions to pair with the popular noodles. Finally, ramen started to develop in a serious way and in a Japanese way. The lighter broth appealed way more to the Japanese palate.

The word ramen, by the way, was apparently borrowed from a noodle shop called Hao Ra Men, a phrase of mixed Japanese and Chinese origin meaning "the noodle dish is ready". So appropriate that the dish which is Japanese and Chinese was derived from a phrase mixing the two languages.

Ramen at Tsuta, the world's first Michelin-starred ramen shop.

How do I know all this? Why is my knowledge of the origins of ramen so encyclopedic, you might ask? Well...it's not really. You shouldn't be impressed. It's not like I did a whole bunch of research or anything like that. We just prioritized a visit to Yokohama's Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Ramen museum, you say? Is there really such a thing? Ummm...yeah, there is. I mean, it's Japan. And amazingly, it's not alone. But we'll get to that.

The top (ground) level of the Ramen Museum features a wall chronicling the history of the development of ramen along with other ramen-related graphic displays; some replicas of historic moments in ramen history (first Japanese ramen store plus a ramen cart); the gift store; and a spot where you can assemble your own custom-flavored instant ramen bowl to go. The lower level of the museum contains the museum's star attraction, a series of historically-based ramen shops which have either resurrected famous lost ramen recipes or which collectively trace the development of ramen over the decades through different concoctions of noodle dishes. The bowls of ramen are smaller sized bowls to allow you to try two or three different flavors of ramen on your visit.

The history display, by the way, goes all the way up to the 21st century, covering how the post World War II black markets popularized complex ramen dishes made with throwaway parts of animals and vegetables which forced greater effort to develop that umami; the development of instant ramen by Momufuku Ando in 1958; and all the way up to the issuance of the first Michelin star for a ramen restaurant (Tsuta) in 2015. Momofuku Ando later developed the Cup Noodles product (known in the United States for a while as Cup O' Noodles) which I referenced earlier in this post. And if you want to know more about that whole thing, there's also a Cup Noodles Museum in Japan and it also happens to be in Yokohama. Bonus!

The world's first instant ramen (top); and statue of Momofuku Ando holding a packet of Cup Noodles.

So about that lower level ramen shop main attraction in the Ramen Museum. Yeah...we didn't do that at all. Skipped it entirely. Didn't even order a single bowl of ramen. It sounded really good. I was pretty intrigued to try the resurrected recipe from Rairaiten (it's now closed) but we never even ordered. We were too full. Couldn't eat another bite.

Why would we show up without an appetite to a museum about ramen whose star attraction is consuming ramen dishes throughout history? We didn't, I swear. The Museum actually has one more room in it where you can participate in a make your own ramen class. Which of course we had to do. And after the class? Well...we ate the ramen we made. What else would we do? Am I sorry we missed out on all sorts of different ramen in the Museum? Sure I am. But when else am I going to make my own ramen noodles? 

Full disclosure here, we only made the noodles. We didn't make our own broth or cook or own pork or even assemble the dish. Just the noodles in the class. That was enough.

The Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum's historical food court.

So making your own ramen noodles in the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum takes about an hour. Maybe a little less. Add some ramen eating time and you are looking at just shy of a 90 minute commitment. Our class time started at 11:30 in the morning which was about perfect for lunch. And fortunately, it was conducted in both Japanese and English.

Ramen making at the Museum is a three step process: (1) make the dough and let it rest; (2) roll out the dough; and (3) cut the dough into noodles. The first part involved mixing our packet of spelt flour with our measuring cup of lye water or kansui (remember we are making ramen so we need the lye water) and then a lot of pressing and folding and pressing and folding while some small Japanese man yelled at us "no pain, no gain" and "I want you, I need you, I love you". With this last part I am fairly sure he was projecting what we should be saying to the noodle dough and not making a declaration of love to us personally. At one time I swear he said "te quiero" but I couldn't be absolutely sure. The yelling was not exactly stressful but it was distracting.

Two things about this step. First, I am not sure if there was anything other than spelt flour in the bag that we used. The dough we were making never developed any gluten so I assume ramen noodles are an un-yeasted product but I'm not sure there was even any salt already added into our baggies. Second, there are two options for flour type in the class: spelt and Japanese flour. But you are not allowed to request Japanese flour unless you have done this sort of thing before. And there's no faking it. You have to cite the prior class that you attended. I'm confident someone's checking.

Demonstrating the pressing of the dough. I want you. I need you. I love you. Te quiero.

Onto step two (after a 10 minute rest - for the dough, and us): the rolling of the dough.

I know what you are thinking: how exciting is rolling out dough? Oh but it is. This is the best part of the whole ramen making experience because we are not using any old handheld rolling pin for this step. Ohhhh no!!! For this ramen class, we are required to use the ancient technique of aodake-uchi, which involved the use of a giant piece of bamboo (the aodoke) to roll out and flatten the dough. And by giant piece of bamboo, I mean like 6-7" in diameter and probably about 5 feet long. A giant piece of bamboo.

The rolling out process is really just a flattening process. You lift and lower the piece of bamboo onto the roll of dough over and over until it becomes flatter and flatter. There's some folding in there but it's flattening after flattening here. You only use one end of the bamboo; the other end is jammed against a wall on the opposite side of the table with a piece of wood above it to prevent the aodoke from flipping over when you press your side of the bamboo lever down onto the table. 

If you need some extra leverage in this part, you can sit on the aodoke and bring more of your weight down onto the dough to get it flatter quicker and just plain flatter. I don't know really quite how to describe how to do this so in accordance with the "picture is worth a thousand words" axiom, I'm just going to show you in two photographs below. One professional and one amateur. It is definitely more effective to do it this way, assuming you don't fall over. I didn't.

After it's flat enough...cut the folded dough into noodles using a chopping board and a giant cleaver attached to some sort of ratcheting mechanism which moves the cleaver down the board and (in theory at least) gets you uniform and correctly sized ramen noodles. As long as you don't get your fingers under the blade, this process which sounds somewhat dangerous is really relatively risk free. 

However, it wasn't as foolproof as you might think on the ending up with uniform-width strips of dough front. I had a little difficulty with the dough remaining flat on the board so my noodles weren't as uniform as they should have been and I also clearly didn't jam the blade down on the board hard enough because I ended up with some noodles that weren't cut through. But...we didn't use all the noodles in the bowl of ramen so I could afford to use the best of the bunch and not worry about the rest. 

After we cut the noodles, we got to eat. I've cooked all sorts of food over the years for myself, including pasta on an occasion or two maybe, but I've added ramen to the list now, although admittedly just a part of the whole ramen experience. Was it worth skipping the Museum's signature food court-like attraction to eat our homemade noodles dipped into broth made by the chef in the noodle kitchen? It was. When am I going to do this again? I mean, sure, I can make ramen at home including the broth, the noodles and everything else, but I'm not doing it with a giant piece of bamboo in our kitchen at home. This was definitely worth getting away from sakura searching for a couple of hours to do. I'm honestly surprised at the lack of fancy technique to get from flour to cooked noodles but the self-advancing knife certainly helped a ton, I'm sure. 

Homemade ramen (top); outside of the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum (bottom).

Our lunch in the Ramen Museum was the third best ramen meal we had in our week in Tokyo. Any guess as to how many meals of ramen we had while in Japan this year? Hint: it's more than two and less than four. That's not to say that our museum-made ramen (which we certainly had plenty of help with) was not tasty or not good. It was. It was perfectly good and fine. But it was not the best ramen you can find in Tokyo, I'm sure. 

We did make a little bit of an effort to find some really good ramen and made a reservation at Tsuta, the aforementioned restaurant which was the first ever Michelin-starred ramen shop. It was certainly a cut above what we cobbled together in our late morning and early afternoon of pounding and cutting dough into noodles. The noodles were certainly way better and the broth was more complex and it was cool to watch the chef and sous chef working in the open kitchen assembling bowl after bowl. We both got the soy sauce ramen and it's going to sound somewhat stupid but the bamboo shoots here were awesome. 

Technically, Tsuta's noodles may be soba noodles but they use the term ramen so I'm jumping in that leaky boat and counting it as a ramen dish.

But Tsuta wasn't the best ramen we had in Japan this year either.

The best ramen we had in Japan. 

When we got back home, I asked Sophia what she thought was our best meal in Japan this year. She said the chicken ramen we got over by the Tokyo Tower after our day trip to Kawagoe. I agreed. It was a place called Ramen Thank Daimon and it was a chicken ramen place. I have no idea whether the name of the restaurant that I've just written is some sort of lost in translation name or if it actually is called Ramen Thank Daimon to Japanese people but the food and particularly the atmosphere was just incredible. This was the best meal of our trip, not the best ramen. Best. Meal.

I am quite confident there are tons and tons of places just like Ramen Thank Daimon all over Tokyo: small ramen shops which are probably mostly underground in long spaces with a kitchen in the back and an ordering machine in the front. And I am sure that most of them are really good. Open the door, punch in your order into the machine. Some ramen with options, maybe a large birhu or two and possibly a Calpis. Pay and go sit down where you are shown to sit, crammed into a space close to other patrons who are eagerly slurping down noodles out of (in this case) chicken-y broth.

This is absolutely the best way to eat ramen in Tokyo. There might be a wait but you won't wait long (we didn't wait but there were people waiting when we left). The dishes look well-used and the chopsticks are not wrapped in paper to be discarded after the meal but instead look worn smooth by thousands of cycles in the dishwasher. And there are even paper bibs to help with the splashing of the broth. The ramen is hot and delicious and if you are lucky, it's a bit cold outside and the hot dish will keep you going with warmth in your belly until you make it to the Metro.

And on top of all that, it's cheap. We have a couple of favorite ramen shops in the D.C. and New York areas but they don't have the same feel as underground ramen joints in Tokyo. There's nothing like them. I will always go for ramen in Tokyo or any other city in Japan. And don't think I'm done with Japan by any means. 

We went to Japan. We ate ramen. We made ramen. We love ramen. Until next time.

Toothpicks. Ramen Thank Daimon, Tokyo.

Haiku

When we visited Ireland in 2019, we passed a sign directing us to the town of Limerick, the ground zero of the short form poems that seemed to be the easiest poems to remember when I was a kid. We didn't actually visit Limerick on that trip, but the sign inspired me to write my own version of the town's eponymous poem. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time.

So now it's 2025 and we've just returned from our second real vacation to Japan. Like Ireland, Japan is also an origin point for a short form of poetry: the haiku. I figured since I delved into poetry six or so years ago, why not do it again this year. If I was inspired by Ireland to write a poem, I pretty much have to be by Japan, which is one of my favorite travel destinations ever (read: way more than Ireland).

Can I squeeze some history in? Which is older? Limerick or haiku? Without looking, I'd have for sure gone with the haiku and it wouldn't have been anywhere close. I just feel Japan is a much more culturally ancient place than Ireland. As it turns out, I am right, but only by about 50 years or so and the name "haiku" dates from the 19th century, later than the limerick was called a limerick. Take that for what it's worth, which is probably pretty much nothing. 

Before I get to my 2025 haiku about the Land of the Rising Sun, let me say two things. First, and in case you didn't know, a haiku is a three-line, unrhymed, often nature-inspired poem featuring five syllables in the first and third lines and seven in the second. I may be Americanizing this rhythm of the haiku because the Japanese language may not recognize quite the equivalent of western language syllables, but it's close enough for this amateur attempt.

Second, this is not the first haiku I have written. I wrote my first in sixth grade and I still remember it to this day. Not because it was especially notable or inspiring but because it was super, super, super simple. Although oddly...completely consistent with the idiom. For posterity's sake, here's my haiku attempt as an 11 year old.

hop hop hop hop hop 

hop hop hop hop hop hop hop 

hop here comes a frog

It's awesome, right? I wanted to clear that low bar this year with my Japan haiku attempt. I hope I succeeded. Read on to judge.

This trip to Japan was very much centered around the annual celebration of the blooming of the sakura or cherry blossom flowers. We deliberately picked that springtime event as the cornerstone and dominant theme of this trip. We spent way more energy and time seeking out sakura sites than we did doing anything else over there. If there's any doubt of our focus on this theme, check out my 31 picture post on this subject from last week.

So if I'm going to sit down and write a nature-themed traditional Japanese poem, it has to be about the sakura, right? Right!

I did Ireland one better and wrote two.

This weeklong trip was very much a tale of two half weeks. The first half of our time in Tokyo was spent in rainy cold weather being frustrated about the lack of glorious sakura sightings. So by mid-week during afternoon tea time at the Grand Hyatt lounge, I'd come up with a framework of the following haiku (which admittedly I finished at home).

Late blossom, drops fall 

Cold winds resist patient spring

Pink blooms crave warm sun

Then the weather turned and we got three (OK, maybe two and a half...) glorious days of sunshine, which opened up the sakura blossoms and inspired a good number of Tokyo-ites to find their blankets or blue tarps at home and head out for hanami time, meaning eating and (for sure) drinking with friends below the cherry blossoms in the sunny morning and afternoon and maybe early evening. It's a rite of spring all over Japan. Some more time in the Grand Hyatt lounge inspired me to write the following.

Gray winter closes

Pink blooms heed warm April's call

Blue tarps now rejoice!

So that's it. That's the whole post. Doing something like this to be creative every once in a while is fun and if it comes with free food and drink at a hotel lounge, then I'm all for this sort of stuff. Back to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

Sakura

I first visited Japan in 2017 and fell in love. Since the day I returned from that trip, I've been telling people my three favorite places on this planet to visit are Paris, Japan and sub-Saharan Africa (it's really four with New York City, but who's quibbling...). Yet as of the end of 2023, I had not returned for a second visit to Japan. Too many places to go, I guess. There are so many places on the list. Heck, I haven't even been to Paris since 2016, which seems like some sort of crime.

Then last year on the way back from Lunar New Year celebration in Singapore, we had a layover for about 18 hours in Tokyo and all the love that I felt for the place came rushing back. Why had we not been here in seven years? What the heck was wrong with us? We had to remedy that and like now.

So as soon as we returned home, we planned our next Japan visit. We debated a bit about when to go but ultimately we picked cherry blossom season. I mean, why not? Why not go to Japan during one of the most spectacular times of the year? Let's not mess around with off-season or shoulder season or any other sort of non-high season. Let's go during one of the most popular celebrations on the calendar. We live right next to Washington, DC which has its own collection of (Japan-donated) cherry blossom trees which draw visitors from all over the United States and beyond. This time of year has to be better in Japan, right? Right?

The lobby of the Grand Hyatt. Ready for sakura season.

The question is, of course, how do you make an advance reservation to go see something that is weather and/or climate dependent. Peak bloom of the sakura (I'm ditching the cherry blossom term for the majority of this post going forward) does not happen at the same time each year. Sometimes it's in late March, sometimes it's in early April. On rare occasions it might be a little earlier or a little later than those times. Sure we could use last year's peak as a guide, but ultimately, there are no guarantees with this sort of stuff.

But ain't that really the case with most things in life? There are very, very few guarantees out there.

Now, we could have decided to go to Tokyo for a few weeks and just make sure we had the entire possible season covered but like I said earlier...we got tons of places to go. One week. That was it here. So, what did we do? We guessed and hoped for the best. We decided last March that our week in Tokyo this year would cover from March 31 to April 5 with our arrival and departure the day before and after those dates respectively. If we were wrong, well...maybe we'd miss out on the whole thing.

The 70 year old weeping cherry blossom tree at Rikugien Garden. Maybe a week past its prime.

That wasn't really how it was likely going to pan out. The odds on missing the whole thing were really astronomically small.

One good thing about sakura season in Tokyo (or anywhere else on Earth, really...) is that the peak bloom doesn't last one day. It's not like there is one particular day that all the various species of cherry blossoms flower spectacularly and then shed all their petals the very next day. We could probably afford to miss peak day by a few days and still get something that would be amazing.

There also are actually many, many species of sakura in Tokyo and they all flower at slightly different times. There is a sakura forecast that is issued a dozen or so times before late March each year that predicts the peak date for blooms in various parts of the country. But this forecast is based on a particular type of sakura (the somei yoshino) and doesn't match up to the petals opening on all other similar but different species. The point here is that we'd probably be OK if we missed the peak day. There would be something, somewhere for us to see. 

I am telling you, though...we sat and waited for those forecasts to come out. January, February. March. Checking every couple of days pretty much for a while in February and early March. 

They seemed to be working out for us. The first, second, third and fourth sakura forecasts for the country of Japan put peak sakura day within the dates we had picked for our trip. Whew! What a relief!! Eventually, peak day seemed to settle down somewhat on April 1, which was day three of our seven full days in country. Sometimes you guess and you guess right. It sure looked like we did with this one. Bring on the sakura!!!

The Grand Hyatt provides guests with sakura maps (top); sakura at Gotokuji Temple (bottom). 

Of course, it didn't work out that perfectly, but we'll get to that.

One thing to know about sakura season in Tokyo is that there are sakura everywhere. And I do mean like everywhere. Sure, there are famous and favorite large concentrations of these trees in major park spaces in Tokyo, but they also line the side of streets; grow in cemeteries; are found on the properties of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines; fill the gardens of museums; and are just there pretty much anywhere else you can find small to medium-sized trees growing. Sometimes when you look at a city like Tokyo big picture, all you see is concrete and glass (and a lot of the concrete in Tokyo seems to be an attractive shade of beige or gray...). But look beyond that and you will start to see plant life everywhere, including sakura. These trees really are all over the place in that city.

They are also all over the place in other ways. Maybe not the whole trees. Sometimes just the flowers. We found sakura representations or decorations on manhole covers all over town and in fabric patterns on at least one of the Tokyo Metro lines. We also found their shapes on cookies and in bags of rice crackers and potentially used as flavorings in cakes. After a week in Tokyo this spring, I have no idea what sakura taste like despite eating a piece of sakura flavored chiffon cake and some sakura-shaped (but not necessarily sakura-flavored) rice crackers. I assume this food stuff fades away outside of blossom season. We didn't notice any of this when we visited Japan in 2017, but we also weren't really looking for them either.

Sakura in manhole cover, subway seat fabric and rice cracker form, various Tokyo locations.

Having said all that, our sakura watching started on day one of our trip. Not full day one. Before that, in the few hours we stayed awake after landing at Haneda Airport and checking into our hotel. 

There is a sakura-zaka (what I interpret to mean a street lined with cherry blossom trees) about a block from our hotel. First impression? Not great. They didn't seem very pink and they didn't seem like they were in full bloom. But then again, it was after sunset and it was three days before the alleged peak. We had time.

We were looking for two things sakura-wise out of our trip to Tokyo. The first was some amazing, fantastic vista of sakura. I mean, that's why we decided to fly 14 hours direct to Japan for a week. We wanted dense, overwhelming, next-level cherry blossoms all around us. Gorgeous, incredible, light pink, petals-falling-in-the-gentle-breeze stuff. We researched all the top places to find sakura in the city and had many, many of them on our list. Yoyogi Park. Ueno Park. Shinjuku Gyoen. Sumida Park. Meguro River. And tons more. We wanted exactly what we came to see everywhere, but we expected it at least somewhere.

The second thing we were looking for were the famous hanami celebrations, which as we understood it prior to landing in Tokyo in late March consisted of Japanese families and friends sitting under the sakura on blankets or blue tarpaulins in public places consuming food and maybe questionable quantities of sake and birhu (I will forever refer to beer this way when talking about that ambrosia in Japan). In my mind's eye, I pictured this as a cacophony of celebration and lust for life at this time of year.

Aoyama Cemetery. A great start to our sakura-viewing.

The weather didn't cooperate. Our first day in Tokyo was a gorgeous spring day but we found the sakura to be generally the same as our first night in the city, meaning not super pink and not in full bloom. Aoyama Cemetery was an incredible introduction to our Tokyo sakura experience; we got a taste of how spectacular things could be and we saw multiple types of sakura (we think). But then it turned rainy. 

And then it turned cold and rainy. 

And then it continued to be cold and rainy.

The cold and the rain did two things for us or to us. First, I believe the weather pushed the peak bloom day into the future. I have absolutely no scientific evidence for this but the blossoms seemed no fuller on April 1 (the supposed peak day) than they did on March 30 and they DID seem more noticeable the next weekend. That gave us fewer days to appreciate peak bloom.

Second, it made us rearrange our schedule to do all the indoors things we intended to do on the rainy days and push all the sakura viewing to the last two and a half days of our trip. But it was really just one day and few hours because we had an appointment on the Saturday (one of the sunny days) that we couldn't re-schedule. This made Friday our key sakura day. A whole day outside in the sun. We made this into an "all eggs in one basket day" and not by choice. We saved what we thought might be the best spots for this one day, knowing that we'd have a couple of hours in the morning on Sunday if we really needed it.

Sakura at night along the Meguro River. They look super pink because the lighting is pink.

So don't get me wrong here. We still saw plenty of sakura during the rain and the cold days. After Aoyama Cemetery, we saw encouraging signs at Gotokuji Temple, Yoyogi Park, Ueno Park, along the Meguro River, in Kawagoe and in the gardens of the Tokyo National Museum. We just weren't overwhelmed with pink flowers in a way that we wanted to be. We didn't find any place where it was like this is worth traveling halfway around the world to experience.

One of the things we did discover in those first few days is how spectacularly impressive some of the trunks on the older trees are. There's a picture above of some sakura at Aoyama Cemetery. The trees on both sides of the photo are of similar height overall but the trunks of the trees are notably completely different. I'm assuming the species are the same (they looked exactly the same in person) which suggests to me that the trees' maximum height is achieved rather early in the lifecycle of the sakura. After that the trees trunks fatten up and ultimately become twisted and gnarled in the most excellent way, even causing some trees to become unbalanced and requiring manmade supports to stay upright. Cool stuff.

Then it was Friday. Eggs. Basket. Just one basket. Here we go.

Sakura under gray skies along the Oyoko River (top); rain splattered pond at the Tokyo National Museum (bottom).

We started Friday with a visit to Rikugien Gardens, a 300 plus year old established way back in 1695 under sponsorship or at least permission from the fifth Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. It's what I would call a sort of classic Japanese landscaped garden, with ponds and bridges and a tea house or two. The gardens are home to a 70-year old weeping cherry blossom tree as well as some other sakura.

The place is spectacularly gorgeous. But not what we wanted. There were barely any blooming sakura and the weeping cherry blossom was clearly way past its prime based on the petals on the ground all beneath its branches. Beautiful, but not what we came to see.

We moved on to Ueno Park, which we had visited during the wettest, coldest day earlier in the week to spend a couple of hours at the Tokyo National Museum. It was so wet that day that we bought umbrellas in the Museum gift store, which is never really a purchase you want to make on vacation. On the way to the Museum, we saw enough light pink in the south half of the property that we thought it was worth a second trip.

There are a lot of sakura at Ueno Park. There are also a lot of people in Ueno Park. The main spine of the park is flanked by a series of sakura on either side under which a flood of sightseers were walking, gawking and taking innumerable pictures of the blossoms and themselves in front of the blossoms. We were also doing exactly that.

Ueno Park didn't do it for us either. It was close, I'll admit. But either the trees weren't full enough or the paths were too wide so that the sakura didn't block out the sky and give us the illusion of being surrounded by cherry blossoms. We are a tough crowd, I know.

Ueno Park. Lots of trees. Lots of people.

I don't how many "best places in Tokyo to see sakura" lists I read in preparation for this trip but suffice it to say that through late Friday morning of our Sunday through Saturday Tokyo visit, we were at a loss to say we'd been blown away by any of the places on those lists that we'd traipsed around the city to see at that point. I'd say we were most impressed (or maybe intrigued by potential is a better way to put it) by the trees at the center of Yoyogi Park (there's a photo below) and the trees along the banks of the Meguro River, which we visited at night on two separate occasions.

But we were not blown away, except by the last two places we visited: Shinjuku Gyoen (on late Friday morning) and Chidorigafuchi Moat (on Sunday morning). If I were writing a blog post about the best place to see sakura in Tokyo (and maybe I sort of am right now...) I'd start with these two and it wouldn't even be close. Am I an expert on this subject? Absolutely not. But these two places made our Tokyo sakura quest. They were head and shoulders above anywhere else we visited.

When we first walked into Shinjuku Gyoen, we saw the tree above. Right there, right then, I was sold. This was the most spectacular single tree we had seen in all of Tokyo. It was huge, it was more than just slightly pink-ish and it was in full bloom. It was incredible. Yes, there are a ton of people in front of it. It deserved the attention. Single most impressive tree in all of Tokyo that we'd seen in our almost full week there to that point.

But that wasn't it. The park kept going and going and unlike Rikugien Park, the sakura kept appearing. Individual trees. White trees. Groves of trees. Pinkish trees. Different species of trees next to each other. Full on pink trees. This is what we had been seeking. Were there ponds and bridges and walkways in the park? Sure there were. Were people picnicking on the grass? Sure they were? But the trees...I'm telling you the blossoms were just overwhelmingly gorgeous and just...there. In the full sun and in full bloom, this is what we came to see. They do exist. This would be the peak. It took until the sixth full day of being in Tokyo after walking what was probably about 50 miles (I'm assuming 2,000 steps for a mile, here) of hard city walking, but we got it. We got what we came for.

Shinjuku Gyoen is like an oasis of cherry blossoms in the city. We actually intended to visit the park on the Monday we were in town but noticed right at the last minute that the park isn't open on Mondays. It may have been a good thing that the place was closed, because we may have visited pre-peak and been disappointed. No such thing at the end of the week. Just an amazing place to see sakura.

More Shinjuku Gyoen, including some blossom close-ups.

Two days later, we found the sakura at Chidorigafuchi Moat, which is at the northwest "corner" of the old Imperial Palace grounds. The moat is a boating spot, meaning rowboats and paddle boats, some of the latter shaped like large swans. The grounds slopes steeply down precipitously in some spots to the moat and perched on the grassy lawns at the perimeter of the property are a series of picture-perfect sakura reaching out and down the hill to those people padding with their hands and feet on the water.

For those of us who decided to remain on land in this scene, there is a walkway at the exterior (meaning away from the old Palace grounds) which passes by every overhanging sakura. When we were there that Sunday, they appeared to be in gorgeous full bloom. If we hadn't been short of time (flight to catch later that same day...) we might have boated but it was enough to walk past and gaze. 

Like Ueno Park and Shinjuku Gyoen and well, pretty much every other place, the walkway around the moat was packed with sakura seekers, probably more so than usual because we were there on a weekend. The path was actually restricted to just one way traffic, it was that busy. We had to walk north along the non-sakura part of the path while jealously watching the people having the best time on the sakura side of the walkway. We eventually got there. It was worth getting to the right spot so we could bask in the glory of those trees.

I'm not saying here that the only places worth going to see sakura in Tokyo are Shinjuku Gyoen and Chidorigafuchi Moat but these two spots were definitely the best. They made our sakura quest. I think the pictures prove it.

Chidorigafuchi Moat. Note the manmade prop in the second  photo.

I have a few last things to say about sakura seeking in Tokyo. 

First, we never really got the hanami experience we wanted. I am sure a lot of it was weather-related and the fact that we hit the most hanami-worthy parks first thing in the morning when it wasn't quite late enough to start some morning drinking. We did see some pretty serious picnicking in both Shinjuku Gyoen and on a day trip to Yokohama but we never got the environment I hoped for, meaning groups of Japanese men and women gratuitously day drinking. I had fantasies of being invited to partake in sake drinking as a passerby and I have no idea why I thought that.

We did see a couple passed out on the Metro and speculated that they had been drinking all day at a hanami party. Sure enough, when we inspected them a little closer, we noticed a blue tarp stuffed into their tote bag. Hanami-ing for sure.

Getting ready for hanami in Yoyogi Park. Note that shoes are not worn on the blue tarp.

Hanami-ing in Yokohama.

Second last thing: the Japanese love to plant these trees along the sides of rivers. I guess this is supposed to create a tunnel of white / pink blossoms when the sakura are in full bloom. We found that the smaller the river was, the more successful this strategy was. We visited Sumida Park and found the Sumida River to be so wide as to negate the intended connection between the sakura on the two shores. We found the effect similar on the Oyoko River (see picture above). 

It worked pretty well along the Meguro River but especially well along the very small Shingashi River in Kawagoe.

Third last thing (there will be four "last things" in this blog post): we had the best intentions of visiting a number of different sakura spots at night to see how spectacularly these trees were illuminated after sunset. We never really made it to all the places we planned to visit, although we did walk past the sakura near the Tokyo Tower and we made it to the Meguro River twice after dark. A number of things un-did us here, including the weather, jet lag and other night-time commitments we made before arriving in Tokyo. There's maybe a regret here. Maybe. I'm not really a regret person so...

Almost hanami time in Oeno Park (top); sakura in Kawagoe (bottom). 

Fourth (and final) last thing: I had some notion that I would be able to pinpoint all the different sakura species around Tokyo after this trip. Why I thought this I have no idea. I guess I figured the information would be readily advertised either online or in the parks we were visiting. It wasn't. I think I can reasonably identify the somei yoshino but I might even struggle with that species in some spots. 

Why would I even mention this? Well, because there's a chance that some of the pictures I have posted are not of sakura at all. I have grave doubts (pun intended) about that gorgeous pink tree in Aoyama Cemetery being a cherry blossom but I just don't know. We generally used the presence of brown-eared bulbuls (they are birds) in the trees eating the seeds as an indicator of sakura-ness but honestly, we didn't wait for a bulbul to land in each tree we saw before taking some pics. Anyway, If there are pics on here that are not of sakura, I apologize.

I'm happy we visited Tokyo in search of sakura this year and I'm pleased with what we found, even if we were disappointed in some of the early returns. I think seasonal-focused destinations that emphasize one focus from the start to finish of the trip are good to take once in a while (I see this trip as similar to our Vienna Christmas market trip). This one worked. 

I'm finishing with a few more pictures of Shinjuku Gyoen which was without a doubt my number one spot here. There are a couple of helpful tips to find some of these things after those last pics.

The cover photo of this post is a detail of a silk kimono from the 18th century. The kimono is housed in the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park.

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Most all of the sakura we sought out in Tokyo were really pretty easy to find. Wander into a park and they are pretty much right in front of you, or just follow the crowd until you get to something incredible. However, we did have difficulty locating sakura in two spots. Some of this is related to a lack of clarity (I believe) in all online resources that I found. Here goes my attempt to clarify.

We took a cab to get to the Meguro River Cherry Blossom Festival because when we pinpointed the festival location on Google Maps, it was nowhere really near to public transportation. We showed our cab driver where to go and the hotel concierge helped us out by explaining to the cabbie what we wanted to go see. A very animated conversation ensued which I assume (with the benefit of hindsight) was the cabbie telling the concierge that we were asking him to take us to the wrong spot. He ultimately took us to where he thought we should be going, which was more correct that what we asked for.

Now that we've been there twice, we now know the right spot to go to visit the Meguro River Cherry Blossom Festival: take the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line to the Naka-Meguro Station (Station H-01) and walk towards the river. 

It took us three tries to locate the Chidorigafuchi Moat. Our first attempt was to enter the old Imperial Place via the Hanzomon Gate at the west side of the property and the Moat with all those boats would be just inside the wall. When we got to the gate, we found it closed. It wouldn't have made any difference if it were open: that's not where the sakura are.

Then on our last day in Tokyo, we made another attempt. We took the Metro over to the east side of the Palace and walked in from there, assuming the inner moat was the spot to be. It isn't. The Moat with the boats isn't on the interior of the massive park that houses the Imperial Palace at all. We walked across the entire property before heading north and finding out exactly where the sakura are. 

The sakura around the Chidorigafuchi Moat are at the northwest corner of the Imperial Palace park. Take the Metro to the Kudanshita Station and start walking west on the south side of the street. You can't miss it doing it that way, I swear.

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