Tachikawa is a big place. Not just two dimensionally across the ground, but a third dimension, up. With it’s multiple urban layers, there’s only one word that describes the area I’m in right now.

Dense.

Dense as in usage, dense as in the number of businesses that are stacked one atop another, and dense as in the number of people that are traveling on all the levels. Dense in the built-up structures that make up this part of the urban landscape.

I’ve never experienced anything this intense before, and it’s somewhat disconcerting to walk about the area, especially during the part of the day when the crowds are at their heaviest. In Orlando I live in a single family dwelling with roughly a third of an acre of surrounding property. It’s drastically, jarringly different to be here.

If there’s one good feature about the second level over the lower streets, is that they are over the streets. You can quickly walk over traffic rather than try to cross over roadways at street level.

And the construction in this area appears to be booming. There are cranes everywhere, huge works that are both broad and tall in the area.

Away from the multiple levels, down at regular street level, it’s “classical” urban Japan.

I’ve read, and been told, about the cherry blossom (Yama Sakura is roughly translated as “wild cherry blossom” and was a Kamikaze subunit during WWII) blooming period in Japan. Unfortunately I arrived in Tokyo at the tail end of the period; the peak for Tokyo was late March, a good week before I showed up.

Today was a wet and windy Easter Sunday here in Tokyo. It’d rained the prior evening as a front came through, and the temperature had dropped as well. When I went out for an early walk into the cold morning, I passed this particular cherry tree with many of its petals scattered around it like snow. As you can see below the blossoms are coming to an end, not only on this tree, but on all the trees in the area.