#042 Flowers on the bank of the Tamagawa Canal

The 42nd scene of Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo” is Flowers on the banks of the Tamagawa Canal. Here is the original picture.

This place, where there are beautiful rows of cherry blossom trees along the canal, is probably the area around the south exit of Shinjuku Station on Route 20 today… and it is probably adjacent to Tokyo Metropolitan Shinjuku High School. The current scenery has completely changed from the old days, and it looks like this.

Unfortunately, neither the Tamagawa Josui Canal nor the cherry blossom-lined embankment exist here. The grove of trees in the upper right of the photo is the northwest corner of Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, but unfortunately it seems that the many cherry blossoms that bloom in the garden cannot be seen from here. The only thing that faintly reminds you of the canal is the curve of the road along the river…

I had chosen this time of year to come here, and I couldn’t go home without taking a photo of a cherry blossom tree, so I stopped by Shinjuku Gyoen afterwards and walked around taking photos of the cherry blossoms in full bloom.

The cherry blossoms were in full bloom that day, and the park was packed with people who had come to admire them.

People from all over the world came to see the cherry blossoms. On this day, I heard many words I had never heard before, and I took photos for people with smartphones of various skin colors.

I took a close-up photo of a particularly large tree crowded with cherry blossom viewers using a wide-angle lens.

It’s true that they were in full bloom and looked beautiful from a distance, but after being hit by cold rain for a few days after they had bloomed, you can see that the flowers have been damaged quite a bit when you get close to them. They did a great job of continuing to bloom!

So, I think it would be better to take a beautiful picture of the cherry blossoms from a distance on this day.

The weeping cherry tree blooms beautifully, competing with the Somei Yoshino cherry tree.

The most beautifully photographed flower of the day.

I took so many photos of cherry blossoms that I ended up getting tired and wanting to take photos of other flowers.

As usual, I don’t know the name of this pretty yellow flower.