The gift of nature
The Japanese Tuin in Hasselt is one of the largest and authentic Japanese gardens in Europe. This garden it’s an extension of the Kaper-molen Park and it’s part of a giant green wedge that starts in the city centre and it extends until the border with Diepenbeek.
The story behind this garden it’s a friendship story. The Japanese garden was given to Hasselt by Itami (Japan) to let Hasseltois know about Japanese culture. In turn, Hasselt donated a carrillon to them.
The garden is divided intro three parts, a transitional zone, the central of the Japanese Garden and an extensive collection of Japanese cherry tres, rooms for celebrations and events and the Shinto Shrine.
Once you’re inside the garden passing the reception, you’ll follow a way full of different types of Japanese trees until you find a traditional Japanese gate called torii that cross the path. The path and the garden have a special distribution so you can’t see the entire garden from one, single point, making this way every corner a new surprise.
Water as symbol of life
The water is an importan element that will always accompany you during the visit, wherever you go, you’ll can always hear the relaxing sound that it makes.
This makes the waterfall one of the most relevants points of the garden. With this, the water is used to symbolized life, it begins as a wild waterfall and ends quietly, with no chance to return to its origin, just like humans in life.
You can take a walk inside the path passing by a zigzag bridge on the water called Yatsuhashi where you can see the kois swimming under your feet and get closer to the waterfall to obtein a very impressive view of it.
After the waterfall, we can find the Central Garden, where the designer planted pine trees as a symbol of eternity.
If we continue walking, we’ll see the Stone lantern. In Japan is usually used as a home for fireflies which symbolize love, and there’s a belief of that the fireflies are the souls of deceased warriors.
From this place, you can see the ceremony house, built in the same style as 17th century tea house. If you go down the stairs the pebble beach appears, where you can feed the kois buying an appropiate feed for them at the office for € 0’80.
If we keep going forward, we’ll be at the cherry tree area, where the celebrations and events are made since in Japan the blossoming of those trees are a reason of celebration. Here we can also find the picnic area.
When you follow the footpath further in the direction of the cherry trees, you will see the new peace bell. The bell was inagurated in October 2016 as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Belgium and Japan. Anyone who wants to, can ring the bell for peace.
On the other side of the path is the shinto shrine. There you can have a short break, bow, clap your hands and donate a little money to charity.
Opposite the shinto shrine, there’s a tiny place where the visitors can write a wish in a piece of paper and hope it will come true. There you can read all the wishes coming from all the corners of the world.
After this, we have the ceremony house, called Korokon, which means “a place of rest and refuge for travellers”. This house is made only with natural materials as wood, bamboo or natural stone. Once you enter in the house, there’s an entrance hall which is the only area with a traditionally paved floor. After that, you can observe different typical Japanese rooms like the waiting room with the tatami or the reception room separated from the outside by paper-covered sliding doors.
When you leave the ceremony house and continuing your way walking right up the hill, you’ll find the tea house, where because of the delicate nature of the building, visitors are not allowed to enter. But you can observe the tsukubai, a stone basin where participants of the tea ceremony cleanse their body and soul.
On your left, you have a suikinkutsu, a Japanese water harp which was installed in November 2017 in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Japanese Garden. You can press your ear against the bamboo tube to hear the soft and relaxing sound of the water harp.
To finish the visit, you go down the hill and you end going back to the first part of the garden again. On your way to the exit, you still have the azumaya, where you can have a seat and enjoy a little bit more of the garden before you leave.