Shunbun no Hi: Terrace Garden

Having posted last year about Shunbun no Hi (spring equinox day in Japan), I thought I’d make it an annual tradition – a post to celebrate nature and living things.

These days the view from my office window is very different from the usual, because I am on a 3-month secondment to a client’s office at St. James’s. The buildings here are lower, older – some dating back to the 17th century. They have gabled roofs, chimney-pots, turrets, courtyards, wrought-iron spiral staircases. My favourite design feature, though, is a terrace garden at the back of the building next door. Victorian red-brick may be fetching enough in its own right, but there are few vistas which cannot be improved by a patch of greenery.

One afternoon a man appeared on this terrace, wearing a plum-coloured suit and holding a champagne glass. Carefully placing the glass on the parapet, he commenced to pace the terrace, declaiming to the winds and performing an incredible series of flamboyant gestures. He may have been an actor, or a madman.

Separated by a hundred yards and a plate-glass window, I sat at my desk, reviewing a non-disclosure agreement and making marks with a highlighter. I say this without exaggeration or undue fancifulness: it was like looking out into a different world.

Vík

Village church of Vík, the southernmost village in Iceland. Vík has a population of 291.

Despite its size, Vík must be an exciting place to live – perhaps too exciting. The village huddles against Katla, one of the most powerful volcanoes in Iceland. Katla last erupted in 1918, and its next eruption is statistically overdue. Furthermore, all known eruptions of the nearby Eyjafjallajökull have triggered subsequent Katla eruptions. Eyjafjallajökull, of course, last erupted in 2010. When Katla erupts, Vík will be obliterated. Earlier this week someone in northern Iceland told us, “When you’re in southern Iceland, sleep with your boots on.”

When we visited Vík yesterday, the Icelandic flags were flying at half-mast. They told us it was because a farmer who lived on the other side of the hill had passed away in the night. He was 102.

Vík also has a black sand beach with spectacular basalt formations.

The waves of the North Atlantic lash the cliffs with vicious force. There is no landmass between here and Antarctica.

Dimmuborgir

Lava formations at Dimmuborgir (the dark citadels). In winter at these latitudes, the sun does not rise far above the horizon. This photo was taken a few minutes before noon.

Akureyri, 12:43 am

The photo shows the lights of Akureyri in northern Iceland, seen from the eastern shore of Eyjafjörður.

Now you may ask why the photo is slightly blurred and the people look as ghosts. That’s because I took the photo with a 15-second exposure, resting the camera for stability on the rear-view mirror of a van (I don’t have a tripod).

You may also ask – and this is not an unreasonable question – what we were doing out in the open in northern Iceland on a winter night. We were looking for the northern lights.

Did we see the lights? Well, not tonight, although the skies over Akureyri were exceptionally clear. We saw the lights on Monday night outside Reykjavík, but it was overcast and the display was brief and faint.

I am in Iceland for four more days, and will keep you posted if I see anything more dramatic. In any event, I can’t help feeling that standing around in the open in subzero temperatures, often in strong winds and snow, craning my neck at the night sky looking for something elusive and fleeting, will – as Calvin’s father would say – help build character.

The Didgeridoo Players of Yoyogi Park

Yoyogi Park was my favourite place in Tokyo. Often, on a Saturday, I would cycle to the park and spend a lazy afternoon reading a book, studying Japanese or strolling along the tree-shaded paths.

It is also a great place for people-watching. Yoyogi Park on weekends is an outlet for all kinds of hobbies, and since this is Tokyo we are talking about, there are some pretty quirky ones. You see people practising martial arts and ultimate Frisbee, Elvis impersonators, ukulele picnics, poodles dressed in denim. And on Saturday afternoons, by the fountains near the south-west entrance, there are the didgeridoo players.

I became friends with these three young people who practised the didgeridoo and djembe. My friendship was not without self-interest: aside from the intrinsic coolness of socialising with Japanese didgeridoo players, it was good conversation practice. They spoke no English, but they used casual modes of address and all kinds of cool street phrases which were beyond the ken of my Japanese teacher.

One day, in the failing late-afternoon light, it occurred to me to take a photograph.

Now by the time I finished the roll of film and had it developed, my stay in Tokyo was almost over. I took an extra print of the photo, and on my last weekend in Tokyo I took it to Yoyogi Park. Not without trepidation: we had never exchanged email addresses, and if the didgeridoo players weren’t in their customary place on that particular Saturday, I wouldn’t get a second chance to give them the photo. But of course they were there, practising as usual.

Some time back I bought a book called Tokyo on Foot. It’s a book of drawings by Florent Chavouet, a French graphic artist who, like me, lived in Tokyo for six months. On page 134-5, there is a hand-drawn map of Yoyogi. Chavouet was in Tokyo five years before me, but by the fountains near the south-west entrance of the park, he has drawn three didgeridoo players.

This makes me strangely happy. It looks like I need not have worried after all about missing them on my last Saturday in Tokyo: the didgeridoo players of Yoyogi Park are one of those fixed points in a changing universe.