The girls found peace in the most beautiful and tranquil miniature garden they have ever seen, Shukkein. It’s name literally means “shrink-scenery garden”, which is very apt.
In the centre of the garden is Takuei pond. One of the stone miniature bridges calling us to cross.
It was fun feeding the coi, some were very large!
We delighted in seeing the miniature gardens which represented various scenic views across Japan, for example a remote mountain and solitary valley and a broad sea shore.
We liked the Koko-kyo bridge which spanned the centre of the pond. Its name means straddling rainbow bridge. We fed the coi again.
There were so many beautiful views in this garden, we found it hard to decide our favourite. We did rather fancied this quaint red bridge over the pond.
We were fortunate enough to have visitors in the gardens today. A traditional Japanese couple came to visit in honour of the Emporer’s birthday.
The garden was destroyed by fire in the atomic bombing in 1945 but it has been restored to its condition prior to the bombing.We can highly recommend a visit to these beautiful gardens.
The girls then ventured through the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. Would you believe the first exhibit we saw was a polished timber Mazda! We thought the boys would love this!
In the exhibition halls there were three artists featured from Hiroshima who were born in the latter half of the Meiji period, the sculptor Katsuzo Entsuba, a western art painter, Sho Yamaji and a Japanese style painter Setsuji Wadaka.
We liked some oil paintings by Mr Sho Yamaji. Our favourite was Roses by Masao Haitani & Sho Yamaji. We laughed when we saw another exhibit by Sho Yamaji titled “Still life with a T shaped ruler”, we thought James would like that one.
We found that Setsuji Wadaka, used the technique colour on paper to produce works such as Fireman in the Village, Woman selling Fish and Village Children. We liked the Woman at the Ravine where both a sketch and painting were displayed.It showed how his initial idea transformed into the final piece of work.
The next artwork we really liked was done by Genso Okuda who put colour on silk. We particularly liked “Waiting for the Moon” & “Autumn Forest and the Moon”, they were stunning.
Our journey to Kyoto was nearing, so we left the Museum to meet the boys at the Hiroshima station.
We caught the Shinkansen Sakura 552 to Shin-Osaka.
A very short trip on the Shinkansen Kodama 670 to Kyoto.
We arrived at Kyoto station and it truly felt like a maze, we couldn’t find a way out without lots of stairs. So, if you can’t get through the mountain, go around the mountain. We walked outside and around to the front. Possibly the only travellers to have ever done this but it worked for us. We collected the key to our apartment and set off towards our new abode for the next week.
We easily found the apartment and the weary travellers enjoyed a cup of tea or hot chocolate.