Japan 2023 Day 12: Okayama Castle and Korakuen
After checking out at Benesse House, we backtracked our way to Okayama for our one night there. When we originally planned our itinerary last year, we hadn’t planned on staying here, but then we discovered that Okayama is home to one of the three great gardens of Japan: Korakuen. In 2019, when we last visited Japan, we went to Kanazawa to see Kenrokuen, one of the other three great gardens, and it was beautiful, so we thought we would see Korakuen since we were essentially in the area. Also, we were hoping that in late March, there’d be some cherry blossoms blooming, and figured that a great garden would be a wonderful place to see them.
After dropping off our bags at our hotel (it was too early to check-in), we started walking to the garden, which would be about 25 minutes away. Along the way, we noticed a cute covered shopping street, also known as a shotengai, and in the center was this out of place looking western style clock:
We were intrigued by this, so we took a detour to walk down the shotengai to take a closer look at it, and then we got distracted again by a store called Blac Sheep Cookies. I completely forgot to take a photo of the sign or the front of the store because as we slowed down to read the sign and look inside, the woman at the counter enthusiastically greeted us in English to come in. As we walked inside, she was very excited and was super friendly. But first, we took a look at the case and were captivated by the selection of delicious looking cookies in there:
If we had more time in Japan, I think we would have gotten like half a dozen, but since we were going to be leaving in a few days, we each got one: Nick got the marble black cookie, and I got the matcha.
As we were ordering, we chatted with the woman who asked us where we were from, and where we’ve been in Japan so far. Based on our interaction with her and from looking around the area, it seemed like they didn’t get very many tourists down there. She even joked that she was happy to see us visit the Japanese countryside, which was funny because Okayama seemed to be a fairly bustling city. In fact, Okayama and Seattle have similar populations, but I guess in comparison to Tokyo and Osaka, it does feel quite small.
After our brief, but lovely chat, we headed off to the garden area, but first, we went to Okayama Castle, which is next to it. In fact, you can purchase a combo ticket, which gains you entry into both the castle and Korakuen.
Okayama Castle is interesting because it’s one of the few, if not only, black castles in Japan:
Unfortunately, the original castle was destroyed in 1945 during the war, so the castle that is there now is a reconstruction. Inside, you can walk through the 6 floors of exhibits, which are all in Japanese, but you can use a nearby QR code to get an English version of the display on your phone. If you love Japanese military history, there’s a lot to learn here about the various clans that were involved.
Since I wasn’t that interested in the castle’s history, I sort of skimmed through the displays and then we headed outside to one of the two watchtowers that survived the bombing:
It’s interesting that the watchtowers weren’t painted black like the castle, and I don’t know why that is, but we’re happy that some parts of the original castle remain on the castle grounds.
Next, we walked across the bridge over the Ashi river to Korakuen:
I forgot to take a photo of the view after the entrance, but it was awesome to walk through the path and then see it open up to a large, extremely well manicured garden. We didn’t know where we were going, so we walked one direction and came across multiple ponds with koi in them:
And for 100 yen (or maybe 200, I can’t remember), you can buy some bread from a nearby vendor to feed them, and of course I did that:
We then saw some cherry blossom trees in the distance, and started heading over to them, and soon we noticed the crowd—the trees were in full bloom! We finally got our sakura moment in a beautiful garden!
There were signs saying that they closed off the area to protect the trees, but I think what they specifically mean is that they didn’t want people to walk through the trees or to picnic underneath them; you can still go to the grove and admire them close-up from the paths.
After spending our time enjoying the beautiful sakura trees, we decided to explore the rest of the garden. There are many ponds in the garden, with various stone and wooden paths:
There’s even a cute little teahouse, where we stopped to get some tea and sweets:
In a separate part of the garden is an aviary of majestic cranes, where you can get a closer look at these beautiful birds:
And then we noticed on a map that there was another area with cherry blossoms, so we headed there, only to find that it was one tree. However, it was a beautiful weeping sakura, with vibrant pink blossoms, so the walk was definitely worth it:
After spending a few hours in the garden, it was time to head back to the hotel, and this time, we took an underground passage to cross the street, and were surprised to see this:
So underneath a major intersection is a large fountain and a terrarium…so random, and completely unexpected given that there’s no indication on the street that this exists, but that’s what we love about exploring cities.
For dinner, Nick wanted to find a restaurant that serves one of his favorite Japanese dishes: doria. It’s basically like a rice gratin, in that rice is placed in a dish, and either a white or tomato sauce is poured on top, and then some type of topping and then cheese, and then baked. Back when we lived in LA, we would go to a restaurant on Sawtelle, and every so often they would serve chicken doria as their special, and Nick loved it. We haven’t been able to find it since we left LA, but since we were in Japan, Nick wanted to see if he could find it.
And it turns out that a couple of restaurants in the basement between department stores near Okayama station serve doria, so we went to one that actually had a doria menu (and by that, I mean three options of doria). However, we had to order using an iPad whose menu was only in Japanese:
Using Google image translate, we were able to order, albeit very slowly. Nick got his doria, and I got a hamburg and pasta combo:
It might not have been the greatest meal we’ve had on the trip, but it was still quite good, and Nick was happy to have doria again after so many years.
And with that, we headed back to the hotel for our one night there because tomorrow, we are off to Hiroshima, with a pit stop at Okunoshima (aka, bunny island!).