Mito Kairakuen - Part 4: Queues

It's been more than a month since plum blossom, so let's wrap up Mito Kairakuen. Since this is Japan the garden comes with its shrine (you can see one of the tree shops in the background) and of course the shrine comes with its queue :-)

Just beside the shrine, more food stands. Mito is famous for nattō, which there was plenty of.
(More natto images, just for fun…)

One of the rare queues that wasn't about food. Waiting to get the chance to get your photo taken with the characters of Mito Kōmon, the longest standing Japanese TV drama in history.

While standing in line you can listen to the soundtrack of the series (yes it's coming out of that plastic "machine" inside that plastic bag) :-)) So much for Japanese high tech.

Of course we did it :-))

Mito Kairakuen - Part 3: Bento, tea and flowers

Time to sit down and have lunch with this bento box bought at the entrance of the garden. It's going to be Gyudon (beef bowl) today.

A few meters away, free beverage. I say beverage because I don't know exactly what it was. I've had it before and I almost spat it out because I expected tea but it was more like a salty sour seaweed broth. Not fab.

The free green tea stand. Ah, that's much better, thanks!

Those babies have just been watered, and yaay, we've found the bonsai shop!

So beautiful and very hard to resist. Bao Zhen and I both adopted one of those. Well, one of those at the bottom of the stand, younger and cheaper.

This is Broken on his first day back home. The plum tree's branches are so fragile, I had no idea and was careless, I admit.
Broken did produce very beautiful and fragrant blossoms, though, and he's doing well. One month later and he now has a few more friends to share the balcony with. You can follow their progress here.

Another tree shop.

See you in Part 4…

Mito Kairakuen - Part 2: Inside the garden and the bamboo grove

When we saw this couple's plum bonsai wrapped up in a plastic bag we thought it was so beautiful. We HAD to find the shop! More about this later on...

Do you remember the days when you took a picture of the square code with you mobile phone and it linked you to a website giving you all the information you need about that particular topic? Is that a Japanese thing? Not that I would know. My mobile phone is from stone age (possibly ice age), I don't think it even "does" pictures :-))

Some specimens had an incredible aura. This one looks like a woman in bikini lying on the beach with a hand behind her head. Her hair is a cascade of flowers. Quite an incredible tree.

And this one. I don't know how old it is but in its lifetime it bent to a ninety degree angle four times!! And it's still alive, there might be more to come!

Yuka touching the "lucky tree" as instructed.  Let's see if luck comes her way soon :-))

OK girls, let's have a walk in the bamboo grove!

No idea what the bamboo-boxes-in-the-bamboo-forest are for...

Bamboo trees and many cedars as well (wonderful place but hello allergies…).

To be continued…

Mito Kairakuen - Part 1: Entering the garden

A day trip to the garden of Kairakuen with the girls on Saturday. Kairakuen is one of the three major landscape gardens of Japan and is famous for its plum trees, in full blossom this week up north where it is a bit colder than in Tokyo (expecting cherry blossoms very soon).

It is of course a tourist attraction, and Japan knows very well how to make a place attractive to tourists. All the main elements are there and it never fails. The seasonal festival, the "plum sisters" to take photos with, the themed shrine, the food stands, the bento boxes, the games for kids, the souvenir shops.

Those are the stairs and the gate of the shrine, but we'll get back to that later on...

The place looks deserted but this was around 10am before the crowd. It's always so much better to arrive early before the buses.

More food. And we haven't entered the garden yet!

Photographing the Plum Queen?

Each of the 3000 trees of the garden is labeled and numbered, with its name, age, and sometimes additional information. Some trees of particular interest also have their own special name (e.g. Moon Shadow).

Bao Zhen's delicate hands taking a snapshot with her phone. Lucky the weather was gorgeous and the sky gently blue. 

To be continued….