Japanese tourism promotions like to work in threes. Miyajima is one of the three great scenic spots in all of Japan, along with Matsushima which we would visit far later in the trip, and one more which we did not visit. The town of Okayama, meanwhile, has one of the three great landscape gardens of Japan, Okayama Kōraku-en, and conveniently was right on the way to Kyoto. We ended up scheduling things a bit tightly, although my mother helped make sure we had a bit more time than we may first have planned.
The station itself was a bit challenging, as we ended up having to split our luggage across multiple locker locations. Thankfully, Japan is saner than the U.S. on this front, so station lockers are easily available. However, they are still fairly costly and the time picking up our luggage on the way back our nearly made us miss the train. Thankfully, at least the bus ride to and from the garden was quite pleasing and we got to see some of Okayama’s trams on the way. We had to pause for a moment while negotiating lunch and figuring out which bus to take back. However, once we were inside the garden proper it was easy to see how it earned its reputation.
The crow castle on the horizon to the left of the picture is not part of the garden, and the best views of it cost a separate admission, but even for the frugal it provides an atmospheric backdrop. The proximity to the castle is not coincidental, as Kōraku-en had been the garden of the daimyo (local lord) until it was opened to the public in 1884. While the view from the castle is no doubt impressive, the garden has its own mound that we proceeded to next that offered a look down at the pond and the inaccessible island buildings.
On the way down from the mound, Moti and Francis encountered a cat. Feline wanderers were not uncommon on the trip, but I don’t think we encountered them that much more frequently than we would in the U.S. This is perhaps slightly surprising, as cats are definitely a favored animal and well represented in souvenirs and anime characters. This particular sunbather looked fairly well fed, but I wouldn’t venture to guess whether it was actually a pet or was just well-treated by gardeners and visitors.
If you want
a full view of the garden, you’ll have to come back once we have the slideshow attached to it; there’s too much there to summarize even in a long post. We’re definitely fans of both Japanese and Chinese gardens. we saw three to five of each on our last trip to the Pacific Northwest, so we weren’t caught by surprise by classic elements like teahouses and zig-zag bridges. However, what did surprise me was finding a building with a stone-strewn stream running through it. It was quite a meditative place to sit with one’s shoes off and I’ve never seen the like before or since.
We split up some throughout the journey. My mother actually went at a slightly faster pace and was rewarded with a closer look at the cranes kept in a large enclosure at one end of the garden. The rest of us did more swift dawdling, taking the time to buy teahouse snacks for later consumption aboard the train later and then looping through the agrarian fields and forests of the garden.
This was actually the second time we’d seen such plantings in a garden in Japan, but they were still rather surprising based on our past experience with such gardens in the United States.The forests were arboretum worthy and showed remarkable color even in the summer. In this case, I believe the well known kaede, red maples, was the source. However, throughout the trip we saw a bit more color than we expected for the season. Classically speaking, I slightly prefer Chinese gardens to Japanese because such fancies as large rocks and elaborate courtyards appeal to me. This visit changed my mind to an extent. I still am quite in love with the Summer Palace park in Beijing, but Okayama has definitely made it into my top list of gardens. Fortunately, as an American, I can pick a top ten rather than needing to limit myself to three.
Update: Minor typological fixes.
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