mindstalk | (Reply)

> To what extent is there public green space?

Google Maps or Earth might be more accurate than my own impressions. :) But: there are lots of parks, ranging from huge to tiny. Also playgrounds that are not particularly green. I don't know whether there's a place within five minutes of any particular spot, though I'd bet my odds are much better than in LA. A lot of shrines and temples are also like tiny parks and may or may not have greenery. Some are just buildings and gravel, but Horikoshi shrine hosted a fair number of plants.

Street trees: variable, tending to rare. Most of the streets don't have room for them, being alleys by US standards! Those often do have visible greenery though, from people putting potted plants along the side of their buildings; you can go down the right street and feel pretty lush even though nothing's planted in what passes for the ground.

> one of the defining characteristics of Japanese gardens is fitting a lot into a small space

Hmm, dunno, that hasn't specifically struck me. The tiny yards I do get glimpses of do seem to make efficient use of the space, but I could say the same of my friend in Glendale who rents a townhouse with a tiny yard, and when she told me what she'd planted I couldn't find room for all that in my mental imagery. Many larger parks are shameless about being a bunch of grass and trees like anywhere else, so it's not like they have a habit of scaling up efficiency into a mid-size botanical garden.

Though that reminds me that I occasionally see completely random tree labels. One memory is of in a shrine, I think Horikoshi, another is just outside a green-less playground in Nara. Like random attacks by a mad botanist.

I sometimes get glimpses of balcony plantings too. Not sure about rooftop. Though the house right next to me has multiple levels, from fishtanks and plants at ground level to stuff above and maybe on the roof. This is the one that makes it hard to sleep properly because I hear watering and dripping at 11 PM and 6 AM...