This a continuation of my previous post Kanazawa – Kenrokuen Garden by Night.

The night visit of the garden has its own magic but the full glory of the Kenrokuen would be revealed only during the day:

At the very entrance of the garden there are tea houses:

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Actually these are much more than tea houses – on the first floor there are souvenir shops and on the second you have a combination of tea room and izakaya (Japanese traditional pub). Actually when we walked next to them during the night we could here from almost every one sounds of music and cheerful human voices. it actually reminded me scenes from “Spirited away” – the entertainment of “No face” when he was big and powerful. The music was almost the same as in the animation movie even though I couldn’t see exactly what was going on on the second floor.

The shaped pine trees are more typical for the garden but they are not the only beautiful thing within it. Rocks covered in moss and little waterfall close to the entrance:

And again – an old pine tree covered in yukitsuri:

As I mentioned before this is the generation one – the ancestors of all other pine trees in the garden:

The ropes are not sufficient though to maintain these intricate shapes. A second support is needed in the form of solid wooden pieces:

The garden is an artificial creation of course. The river flowing through it makes no exception.

As you can see the river bed is covered with small pebbles.

The water for the Kenrokuen river comes from a kilometers long viaduct from near by river (build by one of the ancient daimyos (lords) of the city specially for the garden).

It was a still a winter but the spring was coming:

The Plume garden

Inside the main garden there is a second one – a plume trees garden. You can see plume trees flowering in Japan even in January (at least in Kobe, Osaka area). Kanazawa is a colder city so it seems that mid February is the time when the first flowers of the plume tree appear:

In the plume garden there were and other species of trees. I do not know their name but this one was particularly beautiful:

In several places within the garden you can find tea houses (I saw similar and in other traditional Japanese gardens especially if they are bigger one):

There are concerts sometimes in the house above the water. This is exactly the place of the flute performance during our night visit.

This is the last picture and this is the pond from where the Kenrokuen garden building began (several centuries ago):

This is my first real entry after almost one month of interruption and it will be about Kenroku-en – the most famous Japanese traditional garden (from Kanazawa city).

First we visited it during the day and we liked it so much that we decided to stay one extra day just to have the opportunity to see it one more time (during the night). Moreover we knew that there would be a flute concert so there was no chance we could skip such an opportunity.

The ropes which you see in conical shape around the trees are called – yukitsuri. They are used to protect the branches of the trees from the snow during the winter. You can actually see them not only in the garden but all over the Kanazawa area.

It is interesting that all the pine trees in the park have their own pedigree. For example these are the first-generation trees. All the rest of the pine trees are their descendants.

As you can see from the previous picture it was heavily snowing. When you use the flash it becomes more obvious (and beautiful):

Here are a few more pictures of the main cluster (the ancestor trees):

More yukitsuri (the branches holding ropes)

And finally here is the video – Kenrokuen Garden snowing and the sounds of a flute:

There will be many more photos coming from the Kenrokuen Garden and the Kanazawa area in the next days :)