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Kagoshima Arcades
Raining all day, but who cares when there’s lots of interesting shops and restaurants in the dry? SC writes: Yesterday we blasted south via Shinkansen to “sunny” Kagoshima only to find it raining. Apparently it has been very wet down here with floods and all sorts...but we just got a bit damp. Having checked into our latest hotel (more room but no Onsen, shuttle bus or free coffee), we set off with borrowed unbrellas to explore, mainly in the sheltered arcades of the Tenmonkan downtown area. They clearly get a lot of wet weather here - there are even “free to borrow” umbrellas on the Trams.
We researched options and made plans for the next two days. Tomorrow we’re off on another side trip by train but today we got a one day bus and tram pass and used that to get around. Mercifully the rain held off and we able to get out to Sengan-en, another garden but not one we had planned as CJC explains:
The plan (part of it, anyway) for this visit to Japan was to visit the three most important gardens: Kenroku-en in Kanazawa, Koraku-en in Okayama and Kairaku-en in Mito. But today we found a fourth garden, hardly referenced in the Lonely Planet guidebook on which we usually rely, and
Sengan-en bridge
Note the dome-clipped azaleas all around. not obvious from online research either. Sengan-en in Kagoshima turns out to be a smallish but absolutely perfect Chinese-inspired, feng shui-compliant garden overlooking Kinko Bay and Sakura-jima, one of the most active volcanos in the world (but quiet right now, thankfully!). It’s past the time for plum blossom, of course - but there were pink azaleas in profusion, all clipped into domes and hedges; more exquisite cloud-pruned trees than you could shake a stick at; ponds, and pools filled with thrashing koi carp; shrines and carefully raked gravelled expanses; and huge stones carved into circular lanterns with the most astonishingly massive flakes of rock balanced atop each one.
Then there was the house around which the gardens were set: now only a third of its original size (but big nonetheless) it was sheer perfection and spoke of 19th century luxury combined with traditional Japanese aesthetics, including a delightful interior garden.
But there was yet more: a very interesting museum: the Kagoshima prefecture (formerly known as Satsuma - yes, it’s where the fruit comes from) and in particular Sengan-en is where the Japanese under the leadership of the local Daimyo (lord) finally broke out of their self-imposed National Seclusion
Sengan-en - the ‘jumping lion’ rock
Ok, not really obvious until you’re told - but this is a fine stone carving of a lion with a flying tail jumping down onto this 14 square metre lump of rock (from the beach just over the road), itself balanced atop a huge carved rock ‘lantern’. to adopt Western technology. They didn’t bring in Western engineers - they brought in Western textbooks and combined what they learned from those with traditional Japanese production methods. So it was that in the 19th century they fought a war with the UK during which the Japanese fired cannon balls (home produced cast iron being brand new to them) and the British fired shells back at them, and the first Japanese steamship set sail in 1851, when Isambard Kingdom Brunel was building the Great Western transatlantic ship. They had a lot of catching up to do but adopted Western technology on their own terms ... and the rest, as they say, is history. Fascinating couple of hours in an unexpectedly delightful place ... with, I must confess, excellent shopping opportunities as well!SC writes: Yes an unexpected treat but we did not get a view of the volcano Sakurajima, as you will or will not see. By afternoon the rain returned and we contented ourselves with a run around
Sengan-en - cloud-pruned pine
One of the many perfect cloud-pruned trees in the garden - Pinus thunbergii if you’re interested). on the decent sized tram network.
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