Bloomin’ Marvelous!

For all sorts of reasons, Kangaeroo hasn’t had much of chance to get out and about and cop a look at the cherry blossoms in bloom in Tokyo in 2022.

Nonetheless, that hasn’t meant being completely deprived of a sight that possibly makes the Japanese capital the most beautiful city in the world for a week or so every spring.

Various restrictions have limited viewing to the area of the Tama river and its tributaries, but even then it has made for some wonderful sights, as this gallery shows.

Cop A Gander At These Rippers Too...

  • Darkness Deathtrap

    This morning reminded me that I am a potentially lethal presence on the Tama River Cycling Road. It was cold, wet, dark and raining. And I realized yet again that I am basically blind in those conditions, being unable to see. I’m not helped by only using an 800 lumen light on the track instead of the 2,000 lumen light I had used up until last winter, but which is no longer financially tenable to maintain. Luckily, I made it home safely and was rewarded to see a lush garden basking in the bath it received in the first rain on Tokyo for 40 days!

  • Stunning Start

    The 2025 new year has kicked off in a maginificent manner. We have had unseasonable warmth and the return of once customary brilliant winter sunshine. I started off with a flurry of enthusiasm, too. My year started with an extremely early rise not long after 4 a.m. I quickly showered and got on my bike. Even though I weighed myself for the first time in many months, and didn’t like what I saw, I was still feeling keen. Once my mind started turning over, it was already too late to turn my back, and I was on my way to Tokyo Tower for an in-person AA meeting to launch the…

  • In The Pink

    It looks like the last of the cold weather might finally have left us behind in Tokyo, allowing the final few days of the glorious pink cherry blossoms to be enjoyed in warmth. Sunshine might be a different matter. But I think we can finally wave winter goodbye. Temperatures are set to top 20 degrees every day for the next week. Mrs. Kangaeroo and I have got a weekend together. I’m hoping to visit a tulip festival in Hamura. Every year a number of fields are used to create a patchwork of colorful tulips. It’s quite spectacular. It reminds me of the early days of Teselaar‘s near where I grew…

  • Going Down in a Haze of Story

    For various reasons, I got to look at YouTube for the first time in years this morning and, by sheer coincidence, got to see a video captured exactly 10 years ago to the day. The footage came from a fire that had broken out on the spectacular Rainbow Bridge, which links the Tokyo mainland (well, another reclaimed section) with the artificial island of Odaiba. I was working in the Yokoso Rainbow Tower, an exceptional work of architecture that reflected the flavor of the then-recently burst economic bubble when it was completed in 1995. I’d just finished my lunch break and returned to the office to see Rainbow Bridge on fire….

  • Springing Into March And Marching Into Spring

    Spring seems to have come a bit early this year; sort of. And I got to celebrate my return to cycling shoes amid glorious sunshine, warmth and conditions pretty much perfect for being on a bike. From March 2020 through to August 2024, I wore cycling shoes more than any other type of footwear, and even since then it would be a good chance that I had maintained that record through to November 2025. Then, I fell and broke my leg, and my orthopaedic surgeon and physio therapist had banned me from using cycling shoes as they require a jerking movement in the leg to unclip from the pedal, which…

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    What Happened When Australia And Japan Met At The Olympics?

    オリンピックで出会ったオーストラリアと日本は、その後どうなった？ Sports Day is coming up, so it’s a good time to think that when Australia and Japan began celebrating 50 years of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in 2026, there was an obvious place to look for the story of their relationship: the Olympic Games. The two countries have met at Olympics in Melbourne, Tokyo, Sapporo, Nagano and Sydney, and will meet again when Brisbane hosts the Games in 2032. But the interesting stories are not really about medal tables. They are about swimmers who became rivals, athletes who became Japanese favourites, schoolchildren who adopted an Australian team, students who stayed connected across the pandemic, and even a…