Shukkeien Garden – Greg and Mandy's Travels

You might wonder what the hardest thing about being in Japan is. Is it the language? Nah. Is it the crowds? That’s tolerable. It’s the packaging. I’ve talked before about how a chocolate bar often has four layers of packaging, and it certainly adds to a huge amount of recycling. Well, actually, it’s not recycled. It’s burned. You only get to sort your rubbish into burnable and nonburnable, and by nonburnable, they mean glass and metal. Everything else, including plastic, is burned.

However, it’s the packaging which is the biggest issue. Everything is wrapped. We bought a tart for lunch today and it was folded in a plastic sleeve, placed inside a plastic bag, taped to show you’d paid for it, then put inside a plastic carry bag. We bought a single banana yesterday, and it came wrapped in plastic. But it’s not any old plastic. It’s welded, bulletproof plastic. You can’t open it with your hands. You need to use your teeth. I was physically unable to open my KitKat yesterday without resorting to using my teeth. And then you carry around a plastic bag to hold all your plastic wrapping until you get home. Not a good country for arthritis sufferers.

After breakfast, our first stop was a brief visit to Hiroshima Jo-Gakuen, a junior and senior girls high school here in Hiroshima that is the sister school of Kilvington back in Melbourne. Mandy helped set up the sister school relationship back when Noah was a lad, and exchanges have continued until this day, even though all original staff at both ends are on the pension. We were introduced to the current English teacher who had spent several years in Melbourne, and knew all about Kilvington and their centenary, and were given a very short tour of the school.

Then walked on to Shukkeien. Shukkeien is one of Japan’s most beautiful gardens, begun in 1620, and of course completely reconstructed after 1945. The concept is that it is a compact garden with all of the things you would find in a complete village. So there are lakes, streams, hills, forests, mountains, and gardens all on a small scale. Back in the 1600s it was once the feudal lord’s estate, and his house sits in the middle of the gardens. Very beautiful and very Japanese. Groves of plum trees, cherry blossom trees and peach trees all blossom at different times.

Walked the designated path which took an hour, and was mercifully free of school groups.

Then it was onwards to a rather unused mountain track at the back of a community softball field. Clawed our way up Mt Futaba (Futabayama) on a rough dirt track very reminiscent of walks back home, but not at all like the usual pristine, constructed walking paths normally found here. Were pretty amazed when we got to the top and saw just how high we’d climbed through the trees.

A buddhist stupa stood at the top, and the view of the city was pretty impressive.

After safely descending by a far more civilised path, we headed into a traditional Japanese coffee house for lunch. They roast their own coffee, grind it in an old fashioned mill, then brew it in a traditional coffee pot. None of that Starbucks nonsense.

Home early afternoon. Only 11 km today, but 42 flights of stairs. Turned on the TV to find a riveting Japanese reality show entitled “My dream is to go to the house of a housewife who loves jungle plants “

Headed out for dinner, found a crowd gathered around a girls choir, stopped, and joined in the countdown. Didn’t really have a clue what we were counting down to, but when we got to zero, all the surrounding lights went on, and the choir started singing Christmas carols. Most of it was in Japanese, but some of it was the regular English words. Trouble was, we couldn’t identify what was what. Regardless, they sang beautifully, and were obviously well trained, so the attendant news cameras got lots of lovely footage.

In America, you don’t start Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but with no Thanksgiving in Japan they start the day after Halloween. Then we started noticing. There must have been a swarm of workers going all night. Every shop that had halloween decorations and merch everywhere yesterday, suddenly had Christmas decorations, advertising and merch in it’s place. Happy Holiday!

Dinner at a businessmen’s cafe, where salarymen go to eat dinner after work before falling asleep on their long train commute home.