Flowerpot men, Nagoya style
Recently celebrating my birthday (along with the whole of the country, as the Japanese have very kindly proclaimed my birthday a national holiday), I took the very odd decision to go to Nagoya for the long weekend. As someone who hasn’t yet seen Himeji castle, choosing the Japanese version of Birmingham for a break was not a conventional choice. Luckily, in Japan spending 100 pounds on a train ticket just to eat miso katsu in its hometown is not a laughable story, and telling my students that saved me having to explain who Frank Lloyd Wright is and that there used to be a masterpiece of a Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that was transfered to the Meiji Mura outdoor architecture museum when it was replaced by the concrete monstrosity that now sits opposite the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Luckily also, the one other thing that really took my fancy in the guidebook was just still in season:
Yes, it’s a man made entirely from flowers. If you are not the kind of person to let Japanese horror films or Japanese dolls give you nightmares, there are some more below too:
Don’t know about you, but I can really add nothing to such an overwhelmingly strange floral display…