This morning Tomoko san picked me up in front of my room and we headed north to a garden and shrine and a trail to hike. I was a crisp but sunny day. There was still frost on the moss in the garden when we arrived, but the gold of the last fall leaves was glowing against the bright, blue sky. I had come prepared for a hike, but then it sounded like a walk in a garden, so I didn’t bring my backpack from the car and later regretted it. First, we checked out a vegetable stand where produce was sold for prices way below those in the supper market. I bought taro, which I have learned to cook, and pickled plums (because they are sort of a specialty) and Tomoko bought some huge fresh oyster mushroom, and taro also. The shop let us leave our bags there while we were enjoying the teahouse and gardens. (When we came back hours later, the shop was closed but our bag was still there waiting for us!)
When we entered the teahouse/shop I was surprised to see it full of kimono glad young ladies, but Tomoko explained that in the year when a girl will turn twenty, she gets all dressed up in traditional garb and goes to a shrine on New Year’s day. Since there are a million young ladies there on that day it’s not a good one for taking pictures in the formal gardens, so these young ladies were all decked out like geisha without the face paint just for a photo shoot in the teahouse gardens. This way they will have a really nice picture of this special event and won’t have to worry about the crowds on January first.
After looking at all the lovely, but expensive, things in the gift shop, we inspected the gardens. You can see a few pictures of it in the slide show below. We then hiked up the mountain to a famous look out point and hill top shrine. The sign said it was 900 meters, which didn’t seem like a lot, but most of it was up hill so it took us a while to finally get to the top. The trail up went though a old cedar forest with very tall straight trees and a carpet of leaves. On the way, we met a elderly lady who was coming down. She offered me her stick, which she had apparently picked up along the way. A kind gesture, but I declined as the hardest part is going down and she still had a ways to go. At the top we could see Okazaki and some of the surrounding towns way below. The late fall light was pretty, but it was a bit hazy so the distant mountains were barely visible. We had the place to ourselves except for one couple, who had hiked up another path and joined us as we were reaching the old shrine with the red tori gate.
After hiking back down we were ready for a good meal and that is what we had at the little restaurant that was also in the garden. They offered two set meals, for 1000 yen (that is now about $11) but it was close to closing time and only one choice was left. I can’t tell you the name of the dish, they just go in one ear and out the other, but it was tasty. It came with a rice dish that was still cooking in a little pot over a flame on the tray, an assortment of pickles and sweet things, a seafood ball of some sort, and a bowl of miso soup, and of course tea. The picture I took is terrible but I included it any way so you could at least see how pretty the presentation was. With our meal we got a discount on macha tea and a sweet at the teahouse, so after our lunch we went there for a little tea. Macha tea a the green powder tea that is used in tea ceremony and is always served to the guest in a beautiful bowl with a little sweet to eat before drinking it. You can see a picture of the bowl and the sweet, which was wrapped in a bamboo leaf, in the slide show below.
In the slide show I also included some pictures from earlier this week. On Thursday, Mia and I went to Tomoko’s apartment for a knitting session and dinner. Junco also joined us. She is a friend of Tomoko’s and one of my English class students. She is very sweet and down to earth, does gardening, and yoga, and looks after her husband who is retired. We four ladies decided to dust off our long dormant knitting, or in my case crochet, skills. Tomoko has a huge collection of wool she wants to use up, and I am working on a scarf just to have something to do besides study. Mia is a mad knitter who takes her knitting to school to work on it on her lunch break. Mostly it was just fun to have this very mundane activity to share with our new friends. Just for you plant lovers, also in the slide show a couple of shots of this amazing dahlia that grows here. It towers over the gardens and even passes the roof line on implausibly delicate stems and seems to only come in the pale lavender color.
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| Tea & a hike |
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