We were visiting some family nearby, so we decided to check out the Koishikawa Botanical Garden (小石川植物園). It’s actually the oldest botanical garden in Japan! It’s also affiliated with the nearby University of Tokyo, who do some research here.
I didn’t take any photos, but the garden has a couple of points of interest:
- “Newton’s apple tree”: a graft of the tree that helped Newton discover the law of gravity (taken from his garden)
- “Mendel’s grapevine”: a branch taken from a grapevine that was used in experiments by Mendel, who discovered how genes are passed down
We came at a pretty bad time of year though - everything was a bit dead-looking (I bet it looks gorgeous during the cherry blossom season). Nonetheless, we enjoyed a picnic.
With my newfound birding hobby, I was also on the lookout for birds.
I had made it my February goal to get a good photo of a warbling white-eye or “mejiro” - little did I know how easy these buggers are to spot, they are obsessed with any flowering tree. And they make for such good photos too.
In trying to figure out what Tit this was, this YouTube video amused me in describing the Japanese Tit as having a “necktie like a salaryman”.
These were all birds we had spotted recently at the Shinjuku Gyoen, so nothing new here. But as we left the park and walked the narrow suburban streets, we could oddly hear the noises of a loud rooster.
And yep, someone is keeping chickens in their car garage. Note that this is Bunkyo-ku, home to the Tokyo Dome and generally a fancy bunch of houses which all must cost a hefty chunk of yen. It’s really not the place you’d expect to see chickens.
I’ll admit I had unfairly assumed that these chickens might belong to a house that is a bit on the rundown side, but the cars parked in the garage were both high-end cars (I think one was a Porsche) so it was a pretty unexpected combo. The cars were black so they colour coordinate.
Also they would not stop crowing, and you can hear them from down the street, so I would feel pretty sorry for their neighbours. I wonder if everyone just puts up with it, or if there are noise complaints?
Leave a comment