Why You Should Get Up at Dawn
Our New Favourite Japanese Garden: Okayama Korakuen
We have collected a lot of “favourites” lately, with Himeji Castle becoming our latest favorite castle — and sure enough, we soon found ourselves a new favourite garden when we set foot in our next town, Okayama. Let me explain why you should get up at dawn to see Okayama Korakuen Garden.
Korakuen Garden opens at 7:30 and we were in nine minutes later, having walked half an hour from our AirBnB to save money on transit. We figured correctly that the early morning would be the best time to view the gardens as there would be the fewest people around — and we were right.
The only other people who came this early to the garden were a few dedicated photographers and some salary men and woman who appeared to be taking in the garden before going to work.
The garden is quite open, with large fields of grass punctuated by mirror-like ponds. As a result, anyone strolling around in the garden is quite visible. We went to the highest hill to look out over the main pond and then walked around the pond to see the little islands from different spots.
We were just heading towards the back of the garden when we spotted a Japanese couple in traditional kimonos, followed by a team of photographers. Our best guess was that they were getting wedding photos.
We hurried on so that we wouldn’t be in the background and quickly came upon the Ryuten Rest House, which is a garden pavilion with a shallow stream running down the center. According to some signage we saw later in Okayama Castle, it used to be a great place to float sake down and compose poetry.
The Ryuten pavilion was a unique structure and instantly became our favourite spot. In the early morning, it was a wonderful place to sit and watch the scenery. The Japanese wedding couple passed in front of us and went to the cluster of sakura trees to take photos.
Not wanting to miss out, we walked over to cherry blossom trees via the Yatsuhashi Bridge. Made out of overlapping planks on posts driven into the river, it was an instant hit and we wanted one in our imaginary dream house.
We walked towards the cherry blossom cluster and I was thinking about how nice the experience was when I almost walked into a branch and suddenly found myself completely surrounded by cherry blossoms. There’s a reason we see Japanese people stopping on sidewalks to gape in awe at the cherry blossoms, even if it happens every year.
It was nice that the field with the cherry blossoms was open to walk in, but suddenly we heard a racket over the sound of the gardener’s lawnmowers and saw to our dismay a big tour group approaching. Not wanting to deal with the cultural and etiquettical unawareness that we have been seeing a lot of in tour groups, we decided to leave to find another place to be. Unsurprisingly, a trio of foreigners walked right behind the Japanese couple, who were having their wedding photographs taken by not less than three photographers, in order to take their own photos of the cherry blossoms. This carelessness and lack of consideration is pretty typical of certain tour groups (though this certainly is not true of all groups) and spelled the end to our magical morning.
We went to the other end of the garden and found another small pond with a lone plum tree beside a beautiful bridge. We were able to get some nice photos until another tour group arrived and a woman started beating through a bush to sit on a rock and have her photo taken. We try to leave only footprints behind in our travels and seeing this made us wonder about the influence of tourism on Japan.
After Korakuen garden, we crossed the river to see Okayama Castle. It is a reconstructed castle, having been destroyed several times in the past, most recently in World War 2. It is now a concrete replica and has a museum inside. Having been to Himeji Castle two days before, we felt that it was not nearly as impressive.
We didn’t spend a long time in the castle. Since our ticket to Korakuen garden allowed for multiple entries, we went back to see the last part of the garden that we had skipped earlier. This was around the main entrance, where we got a peach-vanilla soft serve ice cream to share (yum!).
It’s worth noting that Korakuen garden is Okayama’s main attraction and is also ranked as one of the top three gardens in Japan. The other two are Kanazawa’s Kenrokuen and Mito’s Kairakuen. We will be visiting Kenrokuen garden in May with Yuki’s parents when they meet us in Japan. Maybe one day, on a future trip to Japan, we will have the chance to see Kairakuen.
