Vox Hunt: In Bloom

Show us your favorite flower.

The iris.  The standard purple-and-yellow are fine, but not my favorite.  My favorite place in Tokyo that is not a drinking establishment is the Meiji Iris Garden in full bloom.  The scent of the irises--that wet, dense perfume they give off--drifts all the way out to the main path that leads to the Meiji Shrine and it curls around you as you walk toward the iris garden.  I love the weeping, open shape and the patterns of the colors.  

On one of our first dates, I had gone to Nagoya to see T, carrying a copy of a Heisei-era poem that had been composed about an iris garden near Nagoya.  The poem itself, in ancient Japanese, started each line with a syllable from the Japanese word for iris (kakitsubata--thus the five lines started with the syllables ka-ki-tsu-ba-ta).  I wanted to see this garden, allegedly still standing.  T worked on deciphering the poem and its context from the photocopy of the scholarly text I had got it from (don't ask) and found the temple and the garden and took me there.  I would have married him there on the spot.  It's a beautiful little ancient garden, and it was so sweet of him to find it for me.