Japanese Real Estate

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving Holiday was enjoyable. We were able to spend a good bit of time with family we don't get to see very often, so we have no complaints—aside from the usual, "We never get to see enough of everyone; we should get together more often!"

This week everyone headed back to the working interim that falls between the end of November and the end of December, though it is hard to take any of it seriously with all the invitations to the various festivities that litter the calendar at this time of year. That being said, I, too, shall attempt to get back to work . . .

 Okay. I bet this is what most people think of when they think of Japanese cities. This is actually the view from our hotel room in Yokohama, near the bay.

Another city street scene, this time from Miitaka, Tokyo, I believe. The McDonald's franchises there have a great garlic and lemon sandwich. I'd go for it in a heartbeat if they offered it here.

Another hotel view, this time of Yokohama Bay and Yamashita Koen ("Park"). This bayside park makes for a fantastic early morning walk. The park, according to Wikipedia (and I think I heard this long ago when we actually lived in Yokohama.), was built on the rubble from the 1923 Kanto Earthquake.

Now, up the hill we go in Yokohama to where all the interesting old gaijin ("foreigner") homes are located. Yokohama was where all the foreigners settled in the late 1800's, and there's a very large cemetery devoted to them, fittingly called the Foreign Cemetery.

 It's impossibly large and overgrown with old growth to catch a shot of very much of it, but I'll show a couple of photos of particular spots within the cemetery.

That will have to do for now where the cemetery is concerned. I happen to really like cemeteries. They're peaceful places conducive to meditating on the more profound aspects of life. That being said, however, I do not seek them out in the evening. Overly active imaginations and all that.

Below are more shots I couldn't resist including.

 

The problem with waiting four months to report on a set of photos is that memory is not as reliable as digital format. I can't remember the precise purpose of this gorgeous old building, though I know that there were a couple of tea rooms/coffee shops in the area when we lived there, and there was a community organization housed in one of them as well. Probably a historical society.

Above, one of my favorite photos. It is currently up as my wallpaper. I see it every day.

 

A closer shot of the same house and garden.

One of the churches on the Bluff.

Another lovely old home. I would love to have gone inside these homes, but between having little time (We followed our adventure muse and simply wandered up the hill to see what we would find at the top of it!) and not knowing the owners in the least, it was, alas, not meant to be.

Now this one above, I'm pretty sure, had a coffee shop inside, with seating in the garden outside. I ate here once or twice with a co-worker when we worked on the bluff at one of the international schools. True to Japanese form, all of the homes we saw were meticulously maintained. They were beautiful. I don't know if there is an association to preserve historical homes and other buildings, as we have in the U.S., but it would not at all surprise me. Just gorgeous.

Modern siding (and color) on an otherwise antiquarian home.

This one, too, looks like a real gem. Love the columns, the iron work and the green trim against the grey(ish) stucco.

Well, that's it for the foreign (mostly Victorian era) homes in my collection of photos from our recent jaunt to Japan. I guess I haven't even touched on the traditional Japanese homes and establishments. Another post, another day.

Sayonara.