Day trip to Nara, about an hour away by train. I was there last year but never saw any of the gardens. I began with Yoshikien, a wonderful, complex garden I loved so much. The sky was blue; it was cold but bearable; I spent a lot of time just wandering around in the garden.
Moss garden
Photoshoot in the garden
More rocks
Next to it is Isuien, also a lovely garden, but somehow less interesting for me than Yoshikien.
After a brief stop to warm up and have some tea in one of the tourist offices I found out the building was specially designed with some interesting new technology to survive an earthquake. I wonder if we are doing anything like that in California.
I went to Kasuga Grand Shrine, expecting to visit another garden. To my great disappointment it was closed. I took the long walk and climb up to the shrine through a great forest so it wasn’t a wasted trip.
As the day went on clouds covered the sun, but fortunately it didn’t rain. Just got a little colder. I finally stopped for lunch about 3:30, then back to Kyoto.
what I want to know is whether the Japanese youth take advantage of this wealth of beautiful gardenage, or whether they take it for granted. probably the answer is “depends”.
Yes, it depends. I went to one of the most important tourist spots, and one of the most beautiful, today. there were many high school age kids visiting. sometimes they were clowning around big time. Occasionally i saw a them actually pray at a shrine. they take pictures like mad. Do they ever really look? I have no idea.
That first garden was very much less green than the second one. The contrasts were greatly interesting to me tho the buildings and lanterns were fascinating in the second stop.
These great garden shots are a great respite from the news in Chicago – perhaps you’ve heard about the charges against Gov. Blagojevich? Illinois politics as usual, although I know Japan (and certainly China) have their own hefty share of political scandals.