A Series of International Incidents: The Gruesome Gardens*

On the sixth day of my mother's visit, we took a side trip to see Kairaku-en in Mito on our way back to Kanazawa from Tokyo. On this visit to the garden things were quite different, with visible earthquake damage, the first real damage from the March earthquake that I'd seen. Since we live in all the way over in Kanazawa and hadn't seen anything but Tokyo since then, I've been pretty insulated from the destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami - only seeing it on the news like everybody else. Due to how the electric grid is set up in Japan, power cutbacks on our side of the island are irrelevant where the power is needed, though there is a solidarity movement asking you to keep your thermostat at 28C (82.4F) instead of the typical 26 or 27 (78/80 F). Other than that, there has been no change in lifestyle or anything for us. Going back to see the garden in an area north of Tokyo that had really been hit made it a lot more real for me.

As we walked up to the garden, many of the old stone lanterns were knocked down, with rope stopping visitors from getting too close in case the very heavy stones shifted further:

In addition to that, many areas of the garden itself were no longer open for public access due to earthquake damage. This is one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, a major tourist site, over four months after the earthquake, and it was still full of damaged areas. This area wasn't even particularly close to the epicenter of the earthquake or hit by the tsunami. While the center of the park was still open to the public, as you can see, a very large portion of the sloped outer area was not open:

Some bridge joins were obviously no longer perfect fits, and most pedestrian bridges leading up to the garden had asphalt patches where the joins shifted and did not settle as they were before. The garden was still a beautiful place, but I was shocked at the very visible damage, which I'd expected would have been fixed by now.

On a more pleasant note, we then continued on our way to Kanazawa to spend some time where I live and see the sights in that area. Lee and I took my mom out for one of our favorite Japanese foods, okonomiyaki. As an aside, we've finally figured out non-Japanese food okonomiyaki is closest to.  We were originally told pizza, which it definitely isn't, and it isn't pancakes flapjacks either. Okonomiyaki is most similar to latkes, as I realized while making zucchini latkes the other day. Okonomiyaki is huge cabbage latkes with extra stuff (like shrimp) in the mix. Anyway, my mother was a bit surprised that we made her make her own dinner, and that you pay for the privilege of cooking your own food in some restaurants here.  They will make it for you if you ask them, but we didn't tell her that since making it is more fun.

We also went to Kenroku-en and got some lovely pictures there, first time bringing the big camera out to the garden:

I took my mom to the teahouse in the garden to get some traditional Japanese matcha and okashi. The women working there preemptively yelled at her to take her shoes off before stepping into the teahouse, and I certainly had a laugh watching her try the Japanese food for the first time, because they are definitely an acquired taste:

We headed over to the tea district to see a more traditional area of Japan and to check out the souvenir shops before heading home. This is a really nice little place to walk through, especially if you are souvenir-minded:

Again, check out the Flickr set for more pictures, especially more pictures of Kenroku-en. The herons were quite cooperative scenery that day.

*Garden not particularly gruesome - the titles of this series of posts references A Series of Unfortunate Events because the international incidents part is semi-accurate and coming up with alliterative names for the rest of it is amusing.