Bullet Train To Osaka*

7 April 2010
Actually we caught a bullet train to Okayama which stopped at Osaka on the way and being as G doesn’t know any songs with Okayama in the title we have used this for today’s blog entry. Here we are then on the last leg of our r-t-w journey and the last stay of any length in Japan. Okayama is a fairly large industrial city where men and women in business suites seem to rush around constantly and young people ride bicycles up and down the pavements. So why are we here? It is a very good transport hub to a number of other places that we are hoping to visit over the next few days and if we get there we shall blog about them.
Okayama does have a couple of things of note. One is the Korakuen Garden, which is, allegedly one of the finest three gardens in the whole of Japan. We went along there this afternoon and although the sun was shining intermittently the wind was blowing a gale through the place, so much so that the cherry blossom was being strewn everywhere making a carpet of pink on the ground – and yes people were still sitting beneath the trees, wrapped in blankets, having their picnics. The garden is overlooked by a large castle - not a castle as we know it, Jim, but Japanese one with black wooden cladding and glistening roofs edged with gold. The castle was founded in 1573 by Lord Ukita Hidere and the gardens were built beneath the castle by Lord Ikeda Tsunasmasa in 1686. The gardens are unusual in that they have wide expanses of lawns, other than that all the traditional elements are there including teahouses, lakes with islands, streams with bridges and stepping stones, fish and of course rocks. Two unusual features are rows of tea bushes which produce tea that is available to buy in the shop and a small, flooded, rice field.

The wind was so keen and so cold we didn’t stay long. Instead we visited a couple of commercial galleries, one exhibiting the locally produced Bizen pottery and the other with an exhibition of shino-oribe work by a potter named Higuchi Masayuki, much of which was quite beautiful – we may go back again. The gallery owner was delighted that we enjoyed the exhibition and was very proud to tell us her next exhibition is work by a British potter named Christopher Ravenhill, whose name sounded familiar but then again, perhaps not.