Arjan arose - like a Phoenix :-) - and felt well enough to visit one of the most beautiful gardens Japan has, Ritsurin-koen. The garden, dating from the mid-1600s, winds around a series of ponds with lookouts, tearooms, bridges and islands. The weather was wonderful again, so we took our time to admire its beauties and lots of blossoming azaleas and enjoy lunch.
Florence, we have some wonderful ideas for your Japanese garden; but I think you need a full-time (Japanese) gardener for the daily maintenance ;-). Recommendation of Arjan: design a simple rock garden.... We headed back by taxi to join the group to get by public transport to Yashima, 5 km east of Takamatsu. We started with Shikoku-mura, a village museum. The only thing we liked was another museum designed by Tadao Ando, this time an art gallery (which we did not go in) and a rose garden, very alike the chrysanthemums' garden - also designed by him - we visited yesterday near to Kobe.
We had fun with taking pictures of cute young school kids and the umbrella swallow (you have to see the picture to understand that one ...).
We continued by public bus to Yashima-ji, temple no. 84 of the 88 temples of Shikoku, the pilgrimage after Kobo Daishi. We were so lucky that with us, a bus - so not the diehard pilgrims ... - arrived doing their rituals, incl. reciting/singing. We acted like paparazzi to save it all in image. Interesting to see it so lively and again, no other tourists, great!
We returned to Takamatsu around 6.10 p.m. and checked the ferry bringing us tomorrow morning to the nearby Nao-Shima. The island features some stunning art and architecture in a project that was originally started by the Fukutake Shoten publishing company to display its collection of contemporary art. Mr Fukutake Shoten managed to get award-winning Tadao Ando to design its Nao-Shima Contemporary Art Museum. More about it tomorrow!
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