Japan Trip 2019, Day 23: A perfect day

You really can’t ask, as a tourist, for anything better than a clear sunny day of 23°C can you – which is what we got today. We spent it doing one main thing, visiting Kairakuen, one of Japan’s top treasure gardens, but the day was as much about the journey (as they say) as about the experience itself.

Senba Lake

The journey, the walk to Kairakuen, was, from our hotel, about 2.5 kms of pretty level walking, but it took us one and a quarter hours because there was so much to see and enjoy. Most of it took us along the lovely big Senba Lake, which is part of Senba Park and borders Kairakuen (as well as other important places in the city). It is a man-made lake whose design was apparently based upon Hangzhou’s West Lake. So many people were out walking, cycling and running along the path with us – it was such a glorious day – though interestingly very few people gave us an “ohayō gozaimasu” (good morning) or “konichiwa” (good day), even when we greeted first. Unusual in Japan. Maybe Mito is not much used to Westerners, and the traditional Japanese shyness won out.

Anyhow, talking about our journey, we saw (in one or both directions):

• a wine champagne bar (spied by Len – see under Dinner!)
• some lovely vegetation, including old, tagged prunus (plum) trees for which Mito is famous
• lots of water birds, including ducks, a black swan (gift from Australia in 1985), mute (white) swans, grey heron, egrets, cormorant – and pigeons
• a set of four posts that seemed to contain images of games for children – to play en route?
• fishermen, including one sitting cross-legged on his low fishing chair. (He was there around 9.30am and still there around 1.30 pm. Had he caught anything? Who knows?)
• two gorgeous fountains, one particularly impressive one that transitioned to a sort of fleur-de-lys shape
• no vending machines until the commercial end where you can hire paddleboats, etc!

It was a really lovely walk, I must say – relaxed, undemanding (though we did over 16,000 steps by the end of the return trip), but full of interest.

Statues

As we neared the turn off to Kairakuen, we came to a lovely area with a gorgeous bridge and two statues, one of Mito Kōmon (that chap responsible for Mitology) and the other for Tokugawa Nakiaki (who established Kōdōkan, and the Kairakuen garden). They are traditional statues, but good ones, and at least they are for men who did some humane things!

Tokiwa Shrine

Next to Kairakuen, and our next stop, is the lovely Tokiwa Shrine. Founded in 1874, it enshrines the spirits of Tokugawa Mitsukuni (aka Mito Kōmon) and Nariaki, those two prominent former local lords depicted in the statues we’d just seen.

It has several buildings and sections, as shrines tend to do. There’s a lovely little inari shine, guarded by shrine foxes and which has the common, to Inari shrines, little series of vermilion torii. And there’s a shrine building which has a few of those sake barrels near its entrance. These do not contain rice wine, and are called kazaridaru (“decoration barrels.”) They are empty, physically, but apparently full of meaning, spiritually for the shrine.

Kairakuen

As I’ve said a few times before, Kairakuen is ranked as one of Japan’s three finest landscape gardens, the others being Kenrokuen and Korakuen. lt is most famous for its over three thousand plum trees, covering over 100 varieties. (They would make an amazing sight in spring but I reckon you probably couldn’t move then either!)

Kairakuen was built relatively recently, in 1841, by Tokugawa Nariaki. Unlike the aforementioned other two great landscape/treasure gardens, Kairakuen was open to the public, from the beginning. “Kairakuen”, in fact, means “park to be enjoyed together”. This was Nariaki’s policy.

Sights

Kairakuen, like all these gardens, has many “sights”, including of course the plum trees, other signifiant trees, a bamboo grove, a cedar stand, a natural spring, a wisteria trellis – and so on. But probably its most famous sight is its tea-house Kobuntei, which was also designed by Nakiaki and originally built around the same time as the garden. You can read about it at this Japan Travel site. It cost Y200 to enter (less if you are over 70). The gardens themselves are currently free, but we understand that charges are coming on 1 November.

Kobuntei is a historic three-story wooden building, comprising a main house and a one story annex, the nobility’s private quarters. The word “Kobun,” another name for the Japanese plum, originated from China. In 1945, it was completely destroyed by bombing, and took three years to rebuild from 1955. This loss of buildings – through war and natural disasters – is not uncommon in Japan, but as we’ve said before, the industry and commitment involved in rebuilding is impressive. Kobuntei was lovely to walk around. Smaller than yesterday’s Kōdōkan, but still having that lovely open airy feel that all these tatami mat houses with sliding fusamas and lattice doors have. Kobuntei has many gorgeous fusamas, and each one was identified by subject and name of the artist (in Kanji and English). Like most fusamas the subjects were traditional – bamboo, cherry, plum, bush clover, chrysanthemum, azalea, and so on. Just gorgeous. Kobuntei was a major highlight of our visit, really.

By the time we finished in the garden it was about 12.30pm, so we went to the lovely little restaurant at the entrance gate and had traditional lunch fare – a pork and ginger set for me, and curry rice for Len.

We are glad we saw Kairakuen, but Kenrokuen is still number one for us, and we’d put the unranked Ritsurin Koen, ahead of it. But, this is splitting hairs. These are all impressive places, and they are well-maintained. (A lot of manual labour is needed to keep these gardens in good condition, but Japan, it’s clear, is not afraid of manual labour the way many Western nations seem to be.)

After a brief cuppa we returned to our hotel so I could do the washing. That all went pretty well – in case you ask – except I now have a strapped ankle, having twisted it on a silly (I think anyhow!!) little step in the laundry area. Of course, it could be that I wasn’t watching properly!

Dinner, at Vin de Misa

Of course we had to try the place marked “Wine Champagne Bar” – and expected to have a quick drink and move on, but in the end we ate all we needed to eat there. And are glad we did, as the owner could probably use the support.

This place, Vin de Misa, was only a few minutes walk from our hotel, but in a slightly off-the-beaten track location that we hadn’t noticed before. We walked in, about 6.30pm or so, and found a small bar with about 10 stools (and no other seating) which is not uncommon in Japan. You wonder how they survive sometimes. There was no-one else there, and the owner seemed happy to see our two (albeit western) faces. He immediately showed us his Happy Hour sheet which, using Google Translate, we worked out offered 2 glasses (120 ml) of our “favourite” wine and some jamon serrano, for Y12OO. He only served French wines – and by the glass all that was available was a Loire Valley Sauvignon blanc and a Languedoc Pinot noir. I’m not a big fan of Sav Blanc, but this was actually rather nice, subtle with very little of that fruity fruit they can often have.

We liked the place – and its Happy Hour jamon – so much, that we ordered more bar snacks, which formed our dinner. For each order we made, he went out back and prepared:

• assorted pork and chicken sausages (5) served with mustard, a little vegetable garnish, and some potato crisps (served warm)
• sautéed, and marinated in balsamic vinegar, eryngii (king trumpet) mushrooms (served warm)
• octopus and paprika (to him) but capsicum (to us) salad. (for which he produced two Japanese olive oils! Where from, we managed to ask. Shikoku, for one, he replied – which makes sense as it’s warmer there. (served cold)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it can be difficult to perfectly capture the flavour – particularly the balance – of cuisines not your own, but this chap who had never been to France (and therefore I presume, never to Europe) captured the flavours perfectly of these European-style bar snacks. The flavours were delicate, not heavy-handed. And the really fresh crispness of the peppers and cucumber in the octopus salad was wonderful. I could have eaten more and more.

While we were there a young woman popped her head in but left when he confirmed he only had counter seating. A little later a 50-something man came in and, while he didn’t have English, he could use some translation app on his phone, and proceeded to show the owner how to get the app on his phone. Both were amazed though by Google Translate’s kanji reading function.

We didn’t hang around for a long time, as my foot was hurting, we had this blog to write, and communication wasn’t easy despite the available technologies. However, we had a really lovely evening in a friendly, cosy environment. We also had some delicious food, and I had a decent wine!

And some Stills …

And some Movies and Audio …

Click here to view today’s video and audio clips.

Today’s Challenges …

• None really … it all went pretty smoothly. The only challenge was our tiring feet!