Ginza

 We spent some time in Ginza, Tokyo's leading upscale shopping, cafe and entertainment district.

I chose a bento box for lunch.It was delicious.

We ate at the top level of Ginza Six, which had a park-like setting facing the Mikimoto building.

There are many distinctive buildings in Ginza.  Because of the extensive bombing in World War II, many of the buildings are modern.  This is the headquarters of Seiko, the watchmaker.  It looks original, but I don't know.

This is a Nissan building, which also houses SONY.  A very cool building, to my eyes.

My son loved Japanese Manga characters.  He would have liked this truck.

Tokyo Tower

 My hotel is at the edge of Shiba Park in the Minato district of Tokyo.

The hotel shares Shiba Park with Tokyo Tower, a television transmission tower built in 1958.  It was modeled on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and it is ten feet taller but substantially lighter.

With Tokyo's fast growth in the past decades, skyscrapers in the city grew taller than Tokyo Tower, so it is no longer the principal communication antenna for the city.  Today it  is more of an entertainment venue. 

Samurai and Baseball

 I'm in Japan for twelve days or so.

Koshun Masunaga is a noted calligrapher in Tokyo.  She exhibited some of her works, including several commissioned posters for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  In front of us, she filled a sheet with calligraphic art about Japanese star baseball player Shohei Ohtani, a rare pitcher-hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

I like these Samurai warriors. 

Soft

 

In the guest room set up for granddaughter visits.

The October 1 theme for City Daily Photo participants is "soft."  Click here for other interpretations.

Lyndhurst Mansion and Gardens

 Last week I went to Irvington, New York, and toured Lyndhurst.  

Lyndhurst was built in 1838 by General William Paulding, a former New York City mayor who had grown up in Tarrytown and wanted to go home.  He bought 180 acres of farmland for $20,000 and turned it into land for a manor.  Lyndhurst was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, a prominent architect at that time.

Paulding's furnishings are relatively spare.

The second owner was George Merritt, a merchant and inventor, who re-engaged Davis.  Merritt and Davis doubled the size of the manor and turned it into the Romantic Gothic Revival showpiece it is today.  Busts of George Washington (above) and Lafayette line the formal entrance.

In 1880 Jay Gould bought the property.  Gould was a railroad magnate and one of the wealthiest people in the country.  He did not modify the structure, but he added opulent art and furnishings.  

Gould's art gallery is impressive.  One end is a huge glass window by Gould's friend, Louis Comfort Tiffany.  Regrettably my photograph of the wall didn't do it justice, so I don't show it here.

Lyndhurst has a broad view of the Hudson River.

Gould died in 1892, but his daughters owned and seasonally occupied the property until 1961.  In that year Gould's daughter, Anna Gould, donated the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns it today and opens it for tours.

Mark Twain House

Samuel Clemens -- known to most by his pen name Mark Twain -- lived in Hartford for 17 years, from 1874 to 1891.  He wrote his best known books here -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

His house was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter and built in the America High Gothic style. Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan called it "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock."

Clemens bought land for the house in a neighborhood called Nook Farm, a small writers' colony in which the best known author in today's world was his next door neighbor Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Louis Comfort Tiffany decorated several of the 25 rooms in the days before he shifted to concentrate exclusively on his glass works.

The Foundation that operates the Mark Twain House conducts several tours a day, seven days a week.  My family took a tour led by a woman who assumed the role of Clemens' wife Olivia.  Photographs are not permitted inside the house.

A Tall Hartford Mural

This is Reach, an eight story tall mural by ARCY, behind the TheaterWorks building in downtown Hartford.  

 

ARCY describes the meaning of the mural as follows:  "the low bearing fruit may be easy to attain, but to reach beyond demonstrates the will to persevere, to never settle for less than your potential, and to always follow your dreams, no matter how high they are."

ARCY is New Haven-based artist Ryan Christenson, who has been painting murals worldwide over 20 years.  (ARCY is a play on his initials RC.)  ARCY was supported in this project by the Greater Hartford Arts Council, Theater Works and CT Murals.

This post is linked to Monday Murals.