Spring is busting out all over.

Golden Week continues – here are some pics from Rikugien Garden, a landscape garden in Bunkyou (five stops from my apartment) that was built at the beginning of the 18th Century.  It’s amazing how the massively crowded metropolis of Tokyo is riddled with beautiful gardens, shrines and temples shoehorned into places you’d never expect to find them.

Tokyo is especially rich when it comes to gardens.  Not so much the Zen variety, but when it comes to the lanscape style favored by the Shogunate and Daimyo over the Centuries, I believe it actually has Kyoto beaten.  Rikugien isn’t as large as some, but has a lot of interesting features, such as the 88 stone markers (32 remain) that were placed by the designer to designate the “88 Views of Rikugien” (patterned after the 88 Temples of Shikoku) and a couple of fine teahouses left over from the Edo Period.  Like many places in town it’s ablaze with blooming azaleas at the moment.