Okayama (Thursday, October 7)

A beautiful, cloudless day greeted us.  Today was about gardens.  But before getting into that, let’s talk about breakfast.

I like breakfast – always have.  For me, it is usually a bowl of cold cereal, maybe with some fruit or raisins.  I will confess that the elaborate breakfasts here – focused as they are on fish, tofu, vegetables, rice – were starting to get me down.  But the Tsurugata cured me.  Of course, there was the obligatory fish, but this morning it was three small pieces of mackerel that you grilled on a flame at the table (very simple, not like Benihana), and they were really tasty.  And I got them to bring me hot water with which I made Starbucks instant coffee that I had brought with me (although there is a Starbucks here in Kurashiki, about 600m from the Tsurugata).  I heartily recommend the Starbucks instant coffee to any traveler addicted to caffeine who is traveling to out of the way places.  It's an adequate substitute.  

In any event, breakfast was really good, and it was a great way to start the day.

We did gardens.  First, we went off to Okayama (about a 15 minute train ride) to visit Korakuen Garden, which is considered one of the three best gardens in Japan.  We had seen Kenrokuen Garden, which is one of the other two, in Kanazawa.  So, to quote Meat Loaf, two out of three ain’t bad.  We liked Korakuen, although there were more grassy expanses than we had seen at Kenrokuen.  But they blended agricultural things along with the more aesthetic (for instance, there are tea fields and rice fields in the garden).  The day was beautiful and we took many pictures (which I will try to attach at a later time).

We then decided we would hit another garden, but that involved heading off the island of Honshu and over to Shikoku, which is connected by a series of bridges.  We were game.  So we hopped on a train (the marine Liner) and headed for Takamatsu.  Many islands dot the water (the Seto Island Sea) between the two larger islands of Honshu and Shikoku.  The Seto Ohashi Bridge was opened in 1988 and consists of six separate bridges that comprise the whole.   It is about 8 miles long and is the world’s largest double-decker bridge.  Makes the Bay Bridge pale in comparison.

Our destination was yet another garden – this time the Ritsurin Koen Garden outside of Takamatsu.  We may have even liked this one the best of all (even though it isn’t in the consensus top three).  The pine trees, of which there were many, were both sculpted and wild.  I will try to post some pictures when we get an Internet connection again.

Finally, we decided to take a ferry back across the Seto Island Sea to Honshu.  It was a good choice.  We got great views of the islands that dot the sea, saw the very impressive bridge from a distance and although it was overcast we sat outside and it was not too cold. 

We were beat when we arrived back at the Tsurugata.  In the next post, I will describe the dinner we ate that night.