Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Neighborhood Inspiration Between work

Jun 18, 2005 18:36 pm / Add a comment

When I travel, lit­tle things I see, new smell stim­u­late me, and those things make mem­o­ries of expe­ri­ences, includ­ing work I did there.  And more I travel, more I appre­ci­ate the beau­ties around me at home,  more I appre­ci­ate things I take for granted that are very Japanese. 

Just a lit­tle walk around my neigh­bor­hood in Yoko­hama today.  From Shibuya, it’s about 20 min­utes train ride to the Hiyoshi sta­tion, then 30 min­utes walk from the sta­tion.  These are the kind of images that come back to me when my mind is wandering:

Really nar­row alley between houses.

Entrance to an ordi­nary park.

For the past 15 years or so, more and more Japan­ese are dec­o­rat­ing their home with non tra­di­tional flow­er­ing gar­den­ing plants.  Def­i­nitely, the sub­ur­ban scene has become cheer­ful and gay look­ing, com­pared to sub­dued, con­trolled look of the past.  Avail­abil­ity of these plants inex­pen­sively through home cen­ters that has become pop­u­lar over the past 15 years prob­a­bly accel­er­ated the spread of gar­den­ing.  I love the sight and smell, espe­cially sea­sonal flowers.

Ban­boo grass can still be seen here and there, but they are not as com­mon as they used to be.

Bloom­ing hydrangea means June, mon­soon sea­son in Tokyo area.  We tend to asso­ciate this flower with rain.

Some wealthy homes.  Come to think of it,  I am not “friends” with kind of peo­ple who own these kind of homes.  Which makes my view very lop­sided, indeed!  I real­ize my atti­tude is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of group of peo­ple who live in this kind of homes.  Fascinating!

Someone’s lush gar­den in front, laven­der about to bloom, already emit­ting exquis­ite fra­grance.  Plant­ing laven­der has been rel­a­tively new things in sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood in Tokyo, but it seems more and more peo­ple are plant­ing them.  Now I will asso­ciate laven­der scent with June rain, begin­ning of hot summer.

Back­ground build­ing is a pub­lic junior high school.  This is a typ­i­cal school build­ing all over Japan.  The design hasn’t changed until recently.  This con­crete build­ing is like an oven in sum­mer and refre­gi­rater in win­ter.  Along with office build­ings and res­i­den­tial build­ings, we need to think about what would be the most appro­pri­ate edu­ca­tion build­ings for Tokyo weather.  Very humid, 4 sea­son with really hot sum­mer and cold winter.

A neigh­bor is hav­ing their trees trimmed.

Possibly Related

• Eating Plum Blossom Off The Tree Branch
• New Year in Japan
• At our office
• Picture does not come with history
• Change of season
• Place full of fun distraction
• Why people work late/why people don’t work out of home

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