Nashinoki-jinja is on the east side of Imperial Palace, so it is very easy to access it.
I saw Hagi,Japanese bush clover or lespedeza turn yellow.
It is famous for its Hagi and they have Hagi festival the third of Saturday in Sempember every year.
Like in photo, they hung lots of "Tanzaku" or Japanese paper called "Washi" which "Haiku"was written.
Haiku is the shortest form of poetry in Japan.
It tells a story or makes a picture in your mind of something that happens in nature.
Many descriptive words are used in this seventeen-syllable poem. Usually haiku is written in three lines.
There are five syllables in the first line, seven in the second,
and five in the third.
It does not rhyme.
from this HP
"Japanese Haiku"
If you have some more interest in Haiku, please take a look at
this fine site.
I guess we don't study poem as hard as you do in the U.S.A at school.
We study Japanese classics a lot like Genji-monogatari,or Tale of Genji and Heike-monogatari.("monogatari" means a story.)
Both are written in Heian period. I studied twice a week at high school. The reason which I guess is below.
It was not until Heian period that Japanese had our own culture in ourselves.
Before Heian period, we had great influence from China and Korea. We wore clothes from China and Korea, and have our hair style like Chinese did. We also have Kanji borrowed from China in writing system.
But in Heian period, some Japanese women start writing by using their own letters called
Hiragana, while men with power ignored them and insist on using
Kanji borrowed from China when writing on public document.
Tale of Genji or "Genji monogatari" is written by Japanese own letters called Hiragana created by women. It tells us how fragile love is and how sad women's lives are because even women born in powerful aristocrat family and married high ranked aristocrat had no choice but to obey men's order.
I suppose women today like Genji monogatari rather than men today does. So boys at high school have difficulty studying Genji monogatari with litte interest in it.
I like reading novels and comic books of Genji monogatari, the original is too difficult to read for fun.