Chiran gardens & Museum, Ibusuki - 15 May 2017

Saigo Keiichiros Garden (garden no. 1 of the Chiran Gardens)

Monday, 15 May 2017: Samurai gardens, a Peace Museum and a Wellness resort at the seashore.

Morning in Kagoshima: love the cute pole for doggies  

After breakfast at Starbucks Kagoshima, we visited the awesome Chiran Gardens. These are former Samurai houses and gardens, which were built about 250 years ago. 7 gardens with arrangements of stones and beautiful shaped trees are famous, they still breath the atmosphere of the village as it must have been in the Edo period.  

azalea

parasite (staghorn fern) in the neatly manicured tree

cake and cold coffee/tea at a teahouse in the Chiran Gardens

creativity at the teahouse

Near the Chiran gardens is the Peace Museum, which displays materials left by the 1023 deceased army pilots during the Kamikaze (the Japanese call them tokko)  operations in Okinawa during the final moments of WW II. At Chiran there was a training school for these young boys (most of them were in there twenties, some even 17 years old). The museum tells the personal stories of individual pilots and displays relics and their farewell letters, which was explained well by our English audioguide.

Moving on to our home for the next 2 nights: the Ibusuki Hakusuikan resort: a very large hotel at the seaside with hot baths (onsen), sand bath, swimming pool (closed, doesn't open until July (!) grr), adjacent golf course and more.

We were kindly received and given instructions where all the activities are located and brought to our room. After a beer in the 'bar', which wasn't easy to find, we enjoyed a lovely Japanese dinner. 

the Hakusuikan hotel, our room with our yukata's, belt and socks 

Here are the mandatory 'food pics'  

some of the many courses of this evening's Japanese dinner

Tomorrow we intend to take a hot- and sand bath, linger and read a book for a change.

dikke kus

Carina