Arboretum Abroad - Japan 1962 (Tokyo)
“We walked in the vicinity of the hotel to get the flavor of Tokyo - a remarkable city!”
For the initial leg of their international trip, my grandpa and his brother flew out of O’Hare airport in Chicago to SeaTac in Seattle. For someone who wasn’t a fan of flying, he certainly appreciated the overhead view one could only experience from the air:
A good dinner at 35,000 ft - while still following the sun. The countryside like a giant relief map.
Never missing an opportunity to observe the natural world around him, grandpa noted the state of Seattle’s landscape:
Seattle green - trees in leaf. Cornus nuttallii blooming. Flowering Dogwoods and Japanese Cherries blooming. The airport very modern.
They then embarked on the second leg of their journey - from Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska. I was surprised to read that their flight from Washington to Alaska was full! It doesn’t seem like a route that would be particularly well-traveled, although I’d venture a guess that many of their fellow travelers were also continuing on from Alaska to various destinations in Asia. After a brief snack (courtesy of Northwest Airlines), they continued on for the final stretch—from Anchorage to Tokyo, a 7 hour and 20-minute flight. A gander at the history section of the Northwest Airlines History Center website shows that they began their Chicago-Anchorage-Tokyo service in August of 1960, a year and a half(ish) before grandpa and his brother took that exact route to reach Japan.
After finally arriving in Tokyo at 2:30 am, surely jetlagged from the trip, grandpa and his brother checked into their accommodations at the Nikkatsu Hotel. In what I can only admire as an attempt to beat their jetlag into submission, they woke up at 7:30 that same morning and embarked on their first venture.
The suite they occupied commanded “a spectacular view west down Avenue Z, with…Imperial Palace Gardens on right - Hibiya Park on left. The coloring of greens and new foliage - beautiful.”
He took note of the street trees they encountered while walking nearby their hotel—”Ginkgos (partially leafed), Oriental Plums”—and mentioned walking through various shops and over to the Imperial Hotel to investigate the commercial offerings.
Reading through his initial journal entries, it’s clear grandpa was enamored of Japan from the moment he arrived. He detailed the food they ate for every meal (some Japanese, some Continental) and observations about the city’s (to insert my own modern term) vibe. A smart dresser himself, he quickly noted a dichotomy between how the metropolitan residents were dressed: some in the Western-style work clothes familiar to him, others in more traditional dress and kimonos.
Through these tidbits, he paints a vivid picture of his impressions of the city beyond just his horticultural notes.
He wrote and took numerous photos of a handful of exciting sights during their initial days in Tokyo —
Visiting the Imperial Hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright where a gardener was “grooming the Imperial lawn by hand” (the structure was demolished in the 1970s and replaced with a high rise building):
Spending time at Hibiya Park, designed in the early 1900s and laid out in a traditionally Western style, where he appreciated “3 lucky trees of Japan - Pine, Bamboo, Plum”:
And exploring Korakuen Garden, a Japanese-style garden which he describes as a “most interesting landscape - the oldest garden in Tokyo - laid out [in] 1629”:
As a landscape architect, I’m sure grandpa found the variety of parks in different styles inspiring. As a resident of Chicagoland, I’m sure he appreciated visiting another major city that had put such planning, thought, and care into its public green spaces.
My grandpa’s love of trains is evident from his childhood journals on, so it’s no surprise to me that he took the opportunity to photograph trains at a station in Tokyo on their way to the next city on their itinerary - Osaka.
If you have thoughts on what I’ve shared of my grandpa’s travels so far, I’d love to read them—go ahead and share in the comments:
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Wow these photos are spectacular. I can't imagine how it must have been venturing over there a few years after the flights had started. He didn't waste any time!