Sunday, 11 May 2025

11th May - Okayama, Korakuen Gardens

It's Mother's Day today. Quite by chance, this is also a rare opportunity to sleep in, so it was a wonderfully leisurely start to the day. An online family catch-up was also a perfect start to the day. It is now less than a week until we fly to San Francisco to spend some time with Alastair and Sophie and we are very much looking forward to it.

The big news from Bella and Nic is that they negotiated a sale of their house in Nelson a few days ago so they are now frantically packing up. Their family will be moving in with us at Walters Bluff in early June. 

We headed outside at 10am when the shops were opening up. It's Sunday but most shops are open, and many had Mother's Day specials. The florists were doing a booming trade. Our destination was not shops however, but the famed Korakuen Gardens.

We visited the Korakuen Gardens on our first trip to Japan in March 2019. These gardens are not zen, or for strolling in. Their purpose is for 'scenic promenade', where views are wide, open and panoramic. There is a lot of grass instead of little nooks and crannies. Because we were here in early March last time, the grass was pretty much brown from winter, but we still loved the garden. This time, in May, the grass is green, though we have missed the azalea flowering in April. It's hard to get it right!

Okayama Castle at the entrance to the gardens

Korakuen Gardens


It was very pleasant meandering around the gardens and alongside the ponds and little rest-houses or old teahouses. A small crane aviary housed six cranes. The bonus was to see some Japanese couples having their wedding photos taken. Obviously this is a popular locations for that purpose. The women wore exquisite kimonos and looked gorgeous.


On a leisurely return to our hotel room in the train station complex, we took our time looking in a few shops, picked up a couple of items for me (it's Mother's Day after all) and had a quick light lunch of miso soup and a rice/tempura bowl.

Japan takes wrapping very seriously

Karen in one of her favourite spots - in front of a 7-Eleven coffee machine

A little foot-weary, it was a treat to be able to put our feet up at 3pm. For a non-hike day, we still racked up another 12km.