Up at 6:30 am, breakfast at 7:00 in the Café Rose. A group of school students had breakfast before the Café officially opened at 7:00 am. It seemed that a room of boys missed breakfast, and they were given a stern talking-to by adults, then given thermoses of tea from the hotel kitchen.
Instead of toast, this morning they had croissants and brioches. The soup had a broth base, not milk.
We left Hiroshima on the 8:46 am Kodoma Shinkansen.
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| One of the newest bullet trains |
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| The more recognizable bullet train |
This train stopped at Kurashiki. It actually took us to Shin-Kurashiki, and we transferred to the JR Sanyo Line to go to Kurashiki. We could have taken the Sanyo Line all the way, but it would have taken much longer!
Kurashiki
At the Kurashiki station, we put our luggage in a tall Y600 locker. At the back of the station was a Tivoli Theme Park, modeled after the Tivoli in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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| Tivoli Theme Park |
We went out the front through a pleasant plaza, with a TV station broadcasting on a large video screen.
We walked down a shopping street, and when we hesitated to check the map for our turn, an older gentleman on a bicycle stopped to point out the way.
Kurashiki escaped being damaged during World War II, called the Great Pacific War in Japan. In the historic district, you can capture the feeling of old Japan. Kurashiki was once a vital shipping port, where the spinning and textile industry helped it to grow.
Old Kurashiki had stucco walls painted white and topped with tiles of slate gray, burnt brown, or black.
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| Old Kurashiki |
Black and white buildings lined a willow-shaded canal and cobblestone streets.
During the beginning of the Edo period, this area, covered by seawater, was gradually reclaimed. The river, Kurashiki-gawa, was developed as a transport canal. Along the canal, merchant houses and storehouses were built.
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| Kurashiki canal |
We first passed the Ohara Bijutsukan, or Ohara Art Museum.
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| Ohara Art Museum |
Magosaburo Ohara built the Greek Parthenon-style building to house his art collection, including paintings of Western artists (Impressionists) and modern Japanese paintings, tapestries, wood-block prints, etc. Across the canal was the Ohara residence, built in 1795 for the businessman and his family, and now an Important Cultural Property.
Street vendors laid their wares out on blankets at the edge of the canal. We followed the canal around a turn. At the corner was the Tourist Office in a whitewashed Victorian-era building.
Next door was the Kurashiki Mingeikan, or Folk Craft Museum (see sidebar). We paid Y700 each and entered the museum with slippers to walk through the four converted rice granaries with their slick wooden floors. The buildings still have the Edo period white walls with black-tile roofs. The white lattice windows were also typical of that period. The building itself was one of the folk craft objects!
It was converted into a museum in 1948. Inside there were 4,000 objects including ceramics, rugs, wood carvings, bamboo wares, glass, screens, and baskets from around the world. The slogan of the museum is “Usability Equals Beauty.”
Sidebar:
Mingei is the term for art of the people or folkcraft, crafts used in daily life. Soetsu Yanagi, a philosopher and critic, wrote about Western art, literature, and philosophy for a magazine published to introduce European culture to Japan. But his interest switched to Asiatic art. He saw that Japanese folk art was disappearing and he wanted to preserve it and increase national awareness. Yanagi used a replica of a farmhouse from the Tochigi prefecture to house his collection of pottery, textiles, carvings, furniture, kitchen equipment, as the Nihon Mingeikan, or Japanese Folk Arts Museum in Kyoto.  |
| Folk Arts Museum |
In a reconstructed main house and storehouse of a kimono fabric dealer of the late Edo period, the Nihon Kyodo Gangukan, or Japan Rural Toy Museum was established in 1967.
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| Japan Rural Toy Museum |
Here we browsed the gift shop, before paying Y310 each and wandering through the many rooms containing over 5,000 toys from all regions of Japan. One room was devoted to foreign toys.
Sidebar:
Adjacent to the toy museum was a toy store featuring handmade and rather artistic toys. Two artists seemed to be visiting that day with a video cameraman who was recording some of the active toys in motion. A few blocks from the historic district, we found Ivy Square, a large brick complex of buildings covered with ivy. It was once a weaving mill, but has been renovated into a hotel, shops, restaurants, and museums.
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| Ivy Square |
We admired a pile of turtles in the courtyard “moat.”
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| Turtle pile-up |
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| Brynne and Kent with sculpted cedars |
We returned to the other side of the canal, and watched a family of swans.
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| Swan family |
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| Swan family |
At the turn was the Kurashiki Archaeological Museum, built as a storehouse in the late Edo period. The walls were decorated with namako-kabe, or glazed black square tiles, and there were the characteristic lattice windows.
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| Kurashiki Archaeological Museum |
It took us a while to find the Kiyutei restaurant, known for the best grilled steak in town. We entered through a courtyard, and automatic sliding door!
Brynne had curried chicken, but Kent and Tamiko had grilled steak dishes. Pickled veggies on the table. Coke and ginger ale, and Asahi beer for Kent.
After a little window shopping, we climbed the hill of Kurashiki to see the view from Kanryu-ji, a small shrine. The view was blocked by trees and a cemetery wall.
Down the hill on the other side brought us to the pedestrian shopping arcade.
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| Pedestrian shopping mall |
Not just pedestrians, but bicycles and motor scooters as well. We noticed the women had their hands in cooking mitts while riding their bikes. Some women had fancy fabric “blinders” on the handlebars for their hands.
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| Bicycle handlebar hand-covers |
Other women just wore gloves!
At an eyeglasses shop, a dog was sitting on top of a display case outside. We then noticed the dog was wearing glasses!
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| Dog at eyeglasses shop |
He sat quietly while people crowded around to wonder at him.
Near the station were Pachinko parlors. Their doors were etched or covered in such a way that you could not look inside. These parlors have thousands of Pachinko machines where you drop in your silver balls, and hope they drop in such a way to win you more silver balls, which are later redeemed for prizes and money. Sort of a combination of pinball and gambling.
Back at the station we retrieved our bags, and opted to take the Sanyo Line to Okayama.
Okayama and Korakuen
The train to Okayama took only 15 minutes.
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| Rice paddies |
We found Bus #18 (Y160) to take to the Korakuen Garden, one of the three most beautiful landscape gardens in Japan.
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| Korakuen Garden |
Korakuen was constructed between 1686 and 1700. Thirty-two acres on the bank of the Asahi-gawa were laid out under order from Lord Tsunamasa Ikeda. It was used by the Ikeda family to entertain honored guests, and as a place of rest and pleasure for feudal lords until 1884, when it was turned over to the Prefecture and opened to the public.
The garden is a rinsen-kaiyu style, literally a walk-around style of landscape garden, a fine garden for strolling with its ever-changing scenery including charming tea arbors, green lawns, ponds, hills, streams, bamboo grove, and pine, plum, cherry, apricot, and maple trees.
This time we walked to the left in a clockwise direction. At Tsuru-sha, or Crane Cages, we saw the beautiful Tancho cranes. Cranes were kept here since the garden opened, but none survived World War II. Guo Moruo of China, who had studied at the high school in Okayama, sent a pair of these Chinese cranes in 1956 as messengers of friendship between Japan and China. Many cranes have since been born and raised here.
We crossed a picturesque meandering stream of very clear water. Air bubbles rested on the rock bed of the stream, perhaps generated by a small waterwheel located upstream.
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| Air bubbles on the stream's rock bed |
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| Waterwheel |
Sawa-no-ike, the pond in the center of the garden, was likened to Lake Biwa in Ohmi, offering a miniaturized landscape scene.
The gardens tea plantation had neatly trimmed rows of tea bushes of an older species, creating a more bitter tea than average.
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| Tea plantation |
We passed the miniature seiden, or rice fields. At the back of the fields were the giant leaves of the Ohga Lotus.
We climbed the 6-meter high manmade hill called Yuishinzan, which afforded a panoramic view of the garden. Kangetsu-do was a pavilion on the slope of the hill where feudal lords engaged in moon-gazing. The slope was covered with trimmed azalea bushes, some still in bloom. Korakuen also used the technique of borrowed scenery, capturing the Okayama-jo, or Okayama Castle in its views.
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| Okayama Castle as part of the garden view |
Sidebar:
Okayama Castle is also known as U-jo, or the Black Crow castle. Built in the 16th century, it was painted black to contrast with the Himeji Castle. The Okayama Castle was destroyed in World War II, except for two outside towers. A ferro-concrete replica was built in 1966.
Water was diverted through the open structure, and large stones were placed in the water’s path.
Down below the hill, the Ryuten sat next to a stream.
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| Ryuten/Poem-game pavilion |
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| Ryuten/Poem-game pavilion |
Kyokusui-no-en, a poem game was played here. A person improvised the first half of a Japanese poem, as a sake cup was dropped into the upper part of the stream. Another person tried to improvise the second half of the poem before the cup floated to him at the end of the stream. If he failed, he had to drink the contents of the cup.
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| Iris Garden |
We walked around the Iris Garden, then detoured through a dark thicket called Kako-no-mori, which was modeled after the Kiso Road in central Japan, having steep mountains, deep valleys, and a waterfall.
We ended up at the greenhouse, then decided a tiny insignificant building was the Chaso-do, or tea originator’s house. Enshrined here were Sen-no-Rikyu, who invented the Japanese tea ceremony, and Eisai-Zenshi, who is said to have brought the tea seeds from China to Japan.
Off to one side were the apricot, cherry, and maple groves. Back by the iris garden was a wisteria trellis, and further along, a cycad garden. Cycads are similar to palms, but have a fern-like leaf pattern.
Renchi-ken was a tea house behind a pond with the same name. The pond had a cobble-stoned bottom with a recessed section containing several large stones covered with moss.
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| Underwater moss-covered stones |
At the back entrance we had a closer look at Okayama-jo (see sidebar) across the river. Saw swan paddle boats and rowboats for hire.
Passed a bamboo grove, and entered another thicket, Kayo-no-mori. This appeared to be the garden’s rookery, because of the white guano covered leaves and paths, and the squawking of baby egrets in nests.
On the west side of the small Kayo-no-ike pond was the Odateishi, which is said to have been brought from the Inujima island in the Inland Sea. It is a huge rock which was broken into 92 pieces, and put back together again in this garden. This was one of many sets of Yin and Yang stones placed throughout the garden.
The pond was full of the giant-leafed lotus, and was crossed by Eisho Bridge, which zigged and zagged (see sidebar).
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| Zigzag Bridge |
Sidebar:
A zig-zag bridge is designed to be crossed slowly, with the visitor pausing at each angle to enjoy a new view. Finally we came to Enyo-tei, a building with a view of the entire garden across an expansive lawn. The garden was built on a sandbank, and thus moss was difficult to grow. Lawns grow naturally on areas of plateaus and dry riverbeds. Lawns covered one fifth of Korakuen.
The Enyo-tei was used as a place to present lectures of Confucian scholars, and as a place to entertain honored guests. Behind Enyo-tei, is a Noh theater stage.
Outside Korakuen we saw a postal box topped by tiny cranes.
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| Post box topped by cranes |
Crossed the bridge and decided to walk back to the train station.
On the way we saw a fountain behind a decorative wrought-iron fence.
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| Fountain behind elaborate wrought-iron fence |
Saw a revolving door that had a glass display case with a flower arrangement in the center of it.
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| Flower arrangement in revolving door |
Several groups of school girls wore long and extremely thick and baggy socks that draped around their ankles. This appeared to be one of the latest fads in Japan. The socks sold in every department store.
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| School girls wearing baggy socks |
Himeji
We took a Hikari Shinkansen from Okayama to Himeji, taking only about 20 minutes. It was nearly 5:00 pm when we went to a tourist information booth at the station to find a hotel room. We opted for the closest rather than the cheapest hotel.
Just beyond the station was the Hotel Sun Route on the top floors of an office building. Reception was on the fourth floor, and our room was on the seventh.
The elevator doors closed quickly before all three of us were in and did not rebound open, so that Tamiko had to take another elevator to follow Brynne and Kent to the room.
It was too dark and dreary to tour Himeji, so we wandered through the covered pedestrian shopping district, and then bought snacks and drinks.
Our hotel room again had three twin beds, and a Book of Buddha’s Teachings in the desk drawer.
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| The Teaching of Buddha book |
We looked out the window as it began to pour rain. Below us were several Pachinko parlors and slot machine establishments.
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