Today we visited Tennoji Koen, Osaka. The park actually consists of several attractions – a modern part with many flowers and fountains (from this part will be the pictures today), a more traditional Japanese garden part and a Zoo. May be a fourth part is the Art Museum of Osaka which is also situated here.
The Park is quite big so if you want to see everything I advice you to go at least before lunch (the last admittance is at 16:30). We were there around 13:30 and we didn’t have at all time for the traditional Japanese part (the Zoo was much bigger than we expected).
The easiest way to reach Tennoji Park (if you are coming from Umeda station) is Osaka JR loop line. It almost doesn’t matter in which direction you will take the loop line train – the difference is only 1 or 2 stations.
Already at the entrance there was a nice bonsai garden:
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And just in case you doubt there is a Zoo near by:
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And my favorite one – the dancing hippopotamus:
This is a general view from the first (modern) part of the Park:
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The Cabbage (Kale) Traditional Japanese Garden
By far the biggest attraction of this part of Tennoji koen was the cabbage traditional Japanese garden. To be precise the plant is actually kale (or a borecole). I learned that it originates from the Mediterranean but it was the Japanese people who first started to use it for decorative purposes and created the present ornamental variants (it was later re-introduced to the West as decorative flower (here is the article I took the information form)). It seems that the low temperature transforms its green pigment into the nice colors you can see on the pictures (may be and that is why they use it for the winter Japanese decoration – kadomatsu):
Here are the rest of the pictures from the kale garden:
Tomorrow I will continue with the Zoo which turned out to be more fun than we expected :)
