Gardening and concrete mix well...in Japan

It's gardening time in Japan, and I get excited every time I walk out the door...to see if there are any new rose buds or if a plant has broken into full bloom.  Everywhere you go, people are doing their best to grow beautiful flowers in pots in front of their house, as a front yard is a rarity here.  It's amazing how thankful you become  for a patch of ground even three feet long and a foot wide.  It becomes a kind of challenge to see how you can take basically no space and make it as beautiful as possible.  When I look at photos from home, I am overwhelmed by all the beauty many people have right outside their door.  Do you guys appreciate it?  I hope so.


I wonder if this is one reason Japanese have such an exceptional love of nature.  If you come to a major city like Nagoya, you will be struck by how very little nature is visible.  Instead you will find a concrete jungle with an awful lot of telephone poles and wires.  But spread throughout each city block you will find houses of all sizes, and if you look closely, you will surely find many beautiful but very small flower gardens.  Don't we appreciate things more when they are hard to come by?


Here the city, industrial, retail and residential all mix together.  It doesn't leave a lot of room for yards, but it does make for interesting and safe inner city neighborhoods with a mix of all ages and economic groups.  On my block, for example, there is an apartment building, two manufacturing companies and my house.  It gives me a great incentive to provide everyone with a little patch of beauty as they walk by or gaze out of their office window.  Recently, the wife of the Buddhist priest at the temple across the street told me she always looks forward to my flowers each spring.  Ahh...high praise because she is an expert!


Well, the marketing take on this is that connecting your product to nature is ALWAYS a good strategy in Japan.  And of course, in your communication if there is any way to show some natural beauty, especially small beauty against a uninviting background, it can only increase your effectiveness.  Now, the moment I've been waiting for...a good excuse to run outside and take a photo of my early spring flowers...be back soon...www.noah-digital.co.jp/english/