Temple Tuesday - Washing

Prior to entering a Shinto Shrine worshippers wash their hands and rinse their hands at washing basins called chōzuya . First washing their left hand, then right hand, mouth and using the handle of the bamboo or wooden ladle to purify themselves. 

Yanaka Ginza

Yanaka Ginza  has many small tradition shops and is part of Yanaka in the historical Shitamachi area -under city- Tokyo's original downtown area where poor people lived in cramped and unhygienic conditions.

Irises

Irises!  An absolutely divine exhibition of Japanese folding screens (on gold-foiled paper)  from the Edo period  (17th century) featured iris screens and others with summer flowers, by a master screen artist Ogata Korin. They were stunning, glowing, serene and beautiful.  The screens are considered a National Treasure and are in the collection of  the Nezu Museum. The museum gardens were as stunning (even in the rain) as the screens and had irises too.  Iris by a pond! Iris surrounded by maples!  So Japanese!   So Beautiful.

Poster for Nezu Museum Ogata Korin's Irises - Felicitations in Edo-Period Paintings.

Azaleas in the street

Many of the streets in my neighbourhood and other parts of Tokyo have Azaleas as street plantings, hedges, along the streets and canals.

More Wisteria

 Tokyo never ceases to amaze with the contrast of tradition and modern, secular and spiritual, floral beauty and banal buildings - all in the moment!

Wisteria and Tree

The wisteria shrine was near Tokyo Skytree which dominates the skyline in the Asukusa. Now a modern area but the location of the original settlement - Edo - in about 700 AD.

Playing with Lightroom effects.

Wisteria

Another day, another temple with a floral festival.  Wisteria - masses of trellised wisteria - at Kameido Tenjin Shrine in Tokyo in the old centre of Tokyo.  The vine trunks were old thick and twisted. Apparently wisteria were planted here during the Edo period - 1603-1867.

There were wisteria themed ema wishing plates too.