TacoCat’s Travels #149 (Hiroshima): Strolling Amidst Sakura to Okay...

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last couple of posts, we just started recounting our trip to Hiroshima back in April 2019! Sean had won some free air tickets to Hiroshima from a lucky draw sponsored by one of the local banks in Singapore, DBS! Since we've never been, we decided that was a good chance to explore the Chūgoku region!

So last week, we used our JR pass aka bullet train pass to go visit Okayama; specifically Kōraku-en, one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan! Since we found out that it was prime sakura viewing season, we wanted to go see more flowers and what better place to do so than in the "Garden of pleasure (after)"? Which is what Koraku-en means, explaining that a wise ruler must attend to his subjects' needs first.

But anyway, we started exploring the garden and found our way to the Cherry Blossom Grove, which was absolutely lovely!

8 April 2019. Monday.

We walked a little past the cherry blossom grove to dodge the heat and found this koi pond with the sakura petals floating on the surface and it looked just like a painting in real life!

The water was so clear you could see the koi fish so prominently and they looked beautiful contrasting against the floor of the pond.

Here's the map of the entire garden:

And we just walked from the entrance to the top and now going back in a loop around the right side and heading to Okayama Castle!

We passed another huge koi pond right next to a wide open field.

Before arriving to this very pretty pathway with a moat, bamboo trees on the side and overhanging sakura branches! It looked absolutely breathtaking!

Just a little ways down we saw more bamboo trees blending in with pine trees and a bigger bonsai tree? With that stone lantern it looked just like all the Japanese gardens I imagined.

Even the regular trees were arranged so nicely that everything looked so nice and perfect. I felt like I was in a whole other land; it feels so different compared to the urban jungle in the city.

I was so obsessed with the overhanging sakura though. This scene was really picture perfect.

That I had to ruin it with a selfie. welp.

Soon enough, we saw the Okayama castle! It looked so majestic across the river with trees surrounding its base.

So we crossed the Tsukimi Bridge to get a closer look!

The view from the bridge was so lovely as well! Just the different colours of the river, with the castle in the background - absolutely lovely.

And to make things even better, we walked past a guy walking his doggo as we crossed the bridge! It was a big St Bernard too! What a good boi!

It got really windy on the bridge and there were even some paddle boats in the shape of a peach that looked so cute floating on the water.

It was kinda warm with the afternoon sun out, but the wind made it a lot better.

We walked on and eventually arrived at Okayama Castle!

According to Wikipedia, the main tower was completed in 1597, destroyed in 1945 and replicated in concrete in 1966. Two of the watch towers survived the bombing of 1945 and are now listed by the national Agency for Cultural Affairs as Important Cultural Properties.

Okayama Castle has a black exterior, earning it the nickname Crow Castle (烏城, U-jō) or "castle of the black bird"

It didn't look as majestic as Osaka castle since that one is more recently refurbished (in 1997), but it still looked really cool!

Into the entrance we go!

We were trying to figure out where the front of the castle was since we couldn't quite see this as the front but the information board was there so I guess this was it:

It was smaller compared to Osaka Castle for sure, but the architecture was still a work of art. It had a more simple look but still had tons of details and was definitely a site to behold.

Here's the board outside the castle.

I think it was quite crowded inside so we didn't really bother going in especially since most of the information inside was all in Japanese, detailing the history of the castle.

So we walked onwards, slowly making our way back to the entrance.

We found this very cute manhole cover though! I'm not sure if it is but I'm willing to bet it depicts one of the rulers of Okayama in ancient times.

The castle itself was on a separate island from the garden since we had to cross a bridge to get to it.

So we started finding our way back to the station.

But not before coming across some adorable doggos playing together!

Eventually we found a tram station! I don't think we've actually taken a tram in Japan before so it was interesting!

I remember the inside of the tram was quite warm as there wasn't much air-conditioning and the windows were closed so there was little ventilation, unfortunately. But the benches were quite comfortable, especially after walking for so long.

We took the tram to a nearby mall and returned to civilisation, and most importantly get some food!

It was around 2pm so time for lunch! And since I was craving some burgers, we decided to try this place called Freshness Burger!

The name was pretty interesting so I thought it'd be worth a shot. We ordered their chicken burger set with fries and a melon soda:

The chicken in the burger was actually pretty big! And it was pretty yummy! I think it would've been better with a little more sauce though, but still good nonetheless.