Tokyo: Starting to Change

Continuing our coverage of this year's autumn leaf season, I was lucky enough to spend today looking in on three of Tokyo's best-loved leaf viewing spots.

With temperatures throughout Japan's Kanto Region taking a noticeable dip in the preceding week, I was anxious to see how things had developed since Raina's previous visit on November 6. Overall, I found the colors to still be at quite an early stage, with more vibrant tones to be expected in the next few days.

My first visit was to Rikugien, a classic 18th century landscape garden in the north of the city, with forested walking trails arranged around a large central pond. Here, the overall picture was still very green with just the occasional splash of muted orange. Of the leaves that had already turned orange, many had a scorched look, making me worry that this year's unusually hot summer may have caused them to die off prematurely.

More encouraging signs could be found over in the park's northern corner - a popular spot in autumn owing to its rows of maple trees. While these were still a mix of green and orange, I would expect them to develop nicely in the coming days.

From Rikugien I made my way to another of Tokyo's best (and in this case oldest) landscape gardens, Koishikawa Korakuen. Much like Rikugien, the park�fs foliage appeared quite muted at first glance, but I soon began to notice patches of developing colors as I made my way around the large central pond.

Things livened up even more in the vicinity of the small western pond, where the canopy of maple leaves was already showing some vibrant shades of orange and yellow.

Last on today's list was the Icho Namiki, an avenue running 300 meters between Meiji Jingu Gaien and Aoyama-Itchome Station, lined with rows of stately ginko trees known to ignite into dazzling yellow at the season's peak. At the time of my visit, perhaps two-thirds of the trees had already turned while the rest were still quite green.

The overall effect was already quite satisfying, but I expect the ginkgo leaves to look even more vibrant in around a week's time.