Visiting Japan-Day Four-The Gardens

The Japanese pride themselves on their gardening skills, and based on this example, that pride is justified. This was an amazing garden near Nagoya. It was huge and beautiful. Only the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, exceed this garden for beauty among the places I have been. It was a very hot and sunny day when we visited. It was a lot of fun, but tiring. There was a ton of walking.

The Gardens

The umbrella was not for any rain!

The gardens were so well kept and beautifully organized, it was amazing, and the variety of flowers was just dizzying. 

A little glimpse of how they organize the gardens. You can see on the bare ground that there are chalk lines laid out, with a designated area for each kind or color of bloom. There were workers planting in this area as we strolled the grounds.

You can see the chalk outlines where the flowers are to be planted.

When I saw the pansies, I thought of my grandfather Shultis, who always planted pansies around his house. He was quite a gardener. As a young man he had worked on the Westinghouse estate in nearby Lenox as a gardener and he carried those skills with him all his life. He had roses and a super vegetable garden, too.

They only had this one variety of white pansy. My grandpa's were better!

Begonias

The stars of the show in this garden, as far as I was concerned, were the begonias. I have never seen, nor even imagined, such an array of colors and shapes and sizes. They were kept indoors (for a separate admission), and when I opened the door and saw the flowers, I emitted an involuntary "wow."

This picture has the feeling of an Impressionist painting

I don't know whether the flowers were more impressive one at a time or as a group. Either way, they were stunning.

The greenhouse had flowers besides begonias, too.

Ice Cream

After you got through the greenhouse, there was a snack bar that sold ice cream. Flower flavored ice cream. Hard to resist on a hot day. I had begonia and there was blueberry and I can't recall the other flavors. In my defense, the signs were in Japanese.

Reika eating begonia flavored ice cream. I tried some, too and it was good.

Visiting Japan-Day Three

Castle from the town

May 21, 2013-Day Three:

It's our third day (second full day) here, and now we have a car, a very nice Toyota van big enough to hold us all comfortably (there are 4 adults and 2 children). The roads are nice and traffic flows pretty well. The main roads are toll roads and the tolls are high--for example, the two and a half hour drive to Osaka on Friday cost us 4000 Yen (about $40).

Ninja Warriors

Today, though we drove about one hour out of Matsuzaka to a small town with an old castle in it. The really cool thing, however, is that there's a place in town that rents out ninja costumes (for kids,  believe me they don't stock ninja outfits in my size) and there is a ninja museum there. We expected the kids to have a good time and they did. Yuro was outfitted all in red and Reika all in pink and they really enjoyed playing their roles as ninja warriors while we toured the castle and surroundings.

Ninjas Yuro (red) and Reika (pink).

Pink ninja on the lookout

Red Ninja on the prowl

Ninja Museum

The place where they rented the costumes had a lot of cool-looking ninja stuff, including these wagons with their decorative tapestries and this procession. The procession reminded me of pictures I've seen processions in Spain, and it looks like they were chasing out demons or something. Nothing was interpreted in English and there was no guide or guide book so I was kinda on my own in interpreting what I was seeing.

After this part of the museum, and with the kids in their costumes, we crossed the street and went into a large park where the main museum and the castle were. The grounds of the castle area reminded me of a forest or a park in the eastern US, in that the trees were mostly deciduous and there was a lot of undergrowth. To me, it looked wonderful.

At the entrance to the museum.

Inside the main museum was a replica of a ninja hideout. The tour guide showed us trap doors, hidden passageways, secret weapons stashes, disguised observation posts, and stealthy escape hatches. She let the kids use those and they had a great time being sneaky, silent and dangerous ninjas.

Further on, there was a display of ninja weapons, including throwing stars of various sizes and shapes.

I was surprised to see that ninja weaponry included firearms, even primitive cannons. The wooden cannon, according to the sign, was loaded with rocks and wood chips and used as an anti-personnel weapon.

Ninja cannon!

A scary hand-to-hand fighting weapon.

Ninja guns

Ninja Castle

Next to the museum was an old castle. It sits on a hilltop and dominates the surrounding countryside. It was surrounded by a moat and formidable stone walls, and parts of the old moat still remain. It was a bit of a climb to the top, the path was paved with very rough stones that approximated stairs and was very steep, but reaching the top was very worthwhile. It was a wonderful and impressive location. I loved the park-like setting.

A portion of the old moat and wall.

The castle on its hilltop.

The grounds of the castle may have been a military fortress in the old days, but now it is a very pleasant and beautiful park. There were places to sit (which was good, it was quite a climb), and great places to walk. While there was a modest fee for the museum, the grounds of the castle were free. Mexica and I took a lot of pictures.

I know my picture turned out OK, but I'm not sure how Mexica's came out.

Mexica sharing a friendly greeting.

Delialah, Nok, Yuro, and Reika on the top of the castle wall.

Visiting Japan-Days One and Two

Of all the places I've visited so far, Japan was by far the most difficult. Perhaps that was because, for the most part, we stayed away from the most well-worn tourist destinations. The exception, and the most accessible place we visited, was Universal Studios in Osaka. So, there may be some complaints here and there in my narrative. Most of them quite likely reflect my own ignorance of the language, the culture and the nation I was visiting. I hope I was not too much of an Ugly American, but  I fear in retrospect that I was.

May 19, 2013, Day One:

First, though, a funny thing. And this happened just after we arrived at the airport in Nagoya, and we were waiting for boat that would take us to Matsuzaka where we were staying. Yuro (age 5)  asked his Dad "Are you sure this is Japan?" I'm not sure why he asked that but it was hilarious. We took a high-speed boat across Ise Bay from Nagoya. It was a little windy and so the water was choppy, and it was dark so there was no way to see the horizon. The kids (Yuro and his sister Reika, age 3) got sick and Mexica didn't feel so good and I've felt better. Even the crew looked a little uncomfortable and no one on board enjoyed it. By the time we got to Matsuzaka it was raining pretty hard and very windy and I'm quite sure it was the coldest Mexica had ever been in her life. The boat cost 2700 Yen a piece for Mexica and me, with 1 Yen being about $.01.

We finally got to the condo at about  11 PM. We hadn't eaten yet. The only place open near us (and we didn't have a car yet) was a steak house called Bronco Billy's. It was only a short walk, so we ate there. The quality was not great for the price. But  it was really the only bad meal I had in Japan.

May 20, 2013, Day Two:

After we ate, we went across the street to an all-night grocery store. Being in that store gave me a taste of what it must feel like to be illiterate. There were signs everywhere, and I'm sure they were informative, but if I couldn't recognize the food or the label on the package, I had no idea what I was seeing. Very humbling.

As the day dawned, I was surprised to see so many rice fields outside Nok's window. His condo is on the 14th floor and has a nice view towards the inland area outside Matsuzaka. It is not a big city, and his condo is near the outskirts, but  even within the confines of some quite urban areas there was rice. I liked it. It certainly made the cities seem friendlier and it was more attractive (and more useful) than a vacant lot.

Matsuzaka, Japan, the view from the balcony of the condo where we stayed.

Matsuzaka, Japan, the mountains.

The Japanese love gadgets! And that was very clear from the condo. Everything that could be electrified was.