An Okayama stopover

En route to Kurashiki, I chose to stop for a couple of hours in the city of Okayama, mostly to see the famous garden, but also to stretch my legs and to see Okayama Castle.

Japanese folks are fond of ranking things, and the Korakuen Garden in Okayama is ranked as one of the three most beautiful in Japan (I am not sure by whom). Since it’s only about a 30-minute walk from the train station, I decided to stop and see why it was rated so highly. Of course summer is not the best time to see Japanese gardens – probably the worst of the four possible seasonal choices in fact, but one has to take the chances offered.

The garden has lots of lawn (which very green at present), and of course lots of rocks and lots of water, typical of many traditional Japanese gardens. (The photo at the top reinforces this suggestion.) It was first opened in the year 1700, when it was used by the local nobility, but has been open to the public since the  1880s. It seems that it hasn’t changed much down the ages, and was a lovely place to wander around (despite the heat). There were some surprising features of the garden, as well as the traditional green, rocks and water, as shown in the images below.

The garden has a few small orchards (a cherry orchard for the cherry blossom season, e.g.), but I was surprised to find a tea plantation. I was also a little puzzled by the bamboo decorations on some lawns – possibly for a night time display? I was pleased to see the bird sitting serenely on a perch … always a god sign that a garden has fitted into the local environment.

As well as tea and fruit, the garden had a rice plantation. Rice is very important in Japan, and Japanese people are pretty fussy about their rice. (Some Australian rice is sold in japan, I think, but mostly it isn’t, as it doesn’t satisfy the Japanese expectations. I’ve not checked this claim recently … hope it’s not Fake News!) The crop is getting ready to harvest soon, I think, as the blown-up images suggests:

The garden had some nice walks, some of them through small forests and up and down small hills. It got me thinking that it would be very difficult for someone to navigate the paths with a wheelchair, despite their attractiveness:

Next to the garden was Osaka Castle, which looked splendid – at least from a distance:

Japanese castles were built by feudal lords in the old days, but few of them remain in their original condition unfortunately. Okayama Castle was completed in the sixteenth century, and is adjacent to the Karakuen Garden. It was destroyed in an air raid just before the end of the second world war, however, so that today’s version is a concrete facsimile built in the 1960s. Nonetheless, it looked splendid from a distance. I took a closer look, climbing to the top, which gave a good view of the golden roof objects.

These were gleaming in the sunshine and looked even more impressive up close than they did from a distance.
I had not realised from below hat they were fish-like creatures, and they certainly made a good contrast with the dark tiles.

The castle is sometimes known as the ‘Black Castle’ because of its external colouring (although it looked more like grey than black to me).

 

 

Most, but not all, the people I saw today appeared to be Japanese, some fairly clearly so, such as this couple below heading up the hill to the castle.

 

 

Walking back to the train station to resume my journey was interesting too. I was impressed with the street markings, effectively giving a separate lane to pedestrians and to cyclists going in each of the two directions. Pedestrians get their own zebra crossing, too. We often have problems with cyclists and pedestrians sharing footpaths in Perth, although this solution requires a rather wide footpath! Speaking of cyclists, I was intrigued by the sign (which I may be misreading), suggesting that bicycles cannot be parked here.

These signs might be good ideas, but I saw many examples of people not adhering to the commands, with the bicycles parked above a spectacular example, and the bicycles riding the wrong direction a less spectacular one. Japanese folks are very law-abiding (e.g., wait for a pedestrian light to turn green before crossing, unlike, say, residents of Manhattan), so these breaches were a surprise to me.

I also liked the little manhole covers (if that’s what they are):

All in all, a pleasant break of my journey, before heading to Kurashiki, just a few kilometres down the road (or down the rails in my case).