Welcome to Adventures with Sarah! It’s spring in Japan and you know what that means—cherry blossoms. Come for a walk with me through a garden in the city of Okayama to see spring flowers and typical Japanese gardening.
Join us in 2025: https://adventureswithsarah.net/tours/japan-october-2025/
Originally broadcast on facebook.com/adventureswithsarah on April 17, 2024.
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Sarah Murdoch is a tour guide, travel writer, and tour operator covering the globe, specializing in Italy. She worked for more than 20 years for Rick Steves as a tour guide and travel journalist, and co-authored the Rick Steves Sicily book. These days, Sarah is the Founder of Guide Collective (guide-collective.com), and runs Adventures with Sarah, a travel company offering tours around the world. You can find information on packing, travel tips, and how to travel with Sarah on her website, adventureswithsarah.net.
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Andiamo!
Sarah
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[Applause] good me you all friends today I am here in Japan and we are starting our first ever Japan tour and this tour will take us from Hiroshima to okama all the way up to Kyoto and finishing in Tokyo uh today we are in okama which is a beautiful area with Gardens and a Island full of art so over next couple of days we’re going to show you all the things you can see in this area but also uh we are here in April and you know one thing about Japan in April they’re famous for the cherry blossoms or the Sakura here I found just a few and you may be thinking I wonder what time of year I should come to be able to see this well we’re actually a little bit late we should have come a little bit earlier but it depends we’re kind of in the southern part of Japan and as we move more toward the north the flowers they bloom a little bit later so starting end of March until about mid April end of April depending on what part of Japan you’re in you can see the beautiful cherry blossoms so come along with me for a little wander through a beautiful garden here in okama so the Japanese are justifiably famous for having some of the most beautiful landscaping in the world Japanese maple I have one of these in my backyard I’m from Seattle so of course uh a lot of these plants are really familiar aelas Roa dendrons and that means that spring is the best time if you want to see Gardens at their most beautiful the only downside is when you come in spring so does everybody else we have aelia is almost ready to bloom right there so these manicured Gardens are very popular all over Japan this is right next to the castle of okama which as our local guide Yuji just explained to us was not really a castle in the way we think of it the castles that they have here were almost like fortresses for war used to storehouses so this Garden is just across the river and it is absolutely beautiful we’re here in April and it’s about 75° out very nice and lots of structures they have a lot of these interesting structures that they use for performances and events here but there’s a lot of little structures as well mixed into the Japanese landscape uh and part of the theory on Japanese architecture and Landscape is the the philosophy of speaking about uh Decay and growth and so a lot of these structures out here are often left to kind of Wither to tell a story about the age of the place and Japanese gardening has been something that’s been cultivated as an art form for over a thousand years look at that another beautiful little heidy spot here where you can see a gorgeous landscape it’s like a moving painting so this is a gate to a shrine that is within the garden you can kind of see it over here and I just noticed uh as a gentleman exited from the shrine that he bowed and our local guide Yugi told me that that’s because this gate is the divion between a normal space and a Sacred Space and so the tradition is that you bow before you go in there acknowledging that you’re entering into to a Sacred Space it’s a very cool little fact and there’s Yuji over there checking out the little Temple that is within this beautiful garden and you can see how close to yayama the big city we are just on the other side of those trees there’s a river and then there’s a huge major modern city so it’s so lovely to have this little piece of peace and quiet right in the middle of a busy busy City so this is just a little teaser to get you excited about Japan this beautiful garden here in okama and I just wanted to let you know that it smells delicious out here I wish there was such a thing as smell of vision and you can hear how absolutely lovely the smells are in spring time out here in Japan so join us again all week for the next week and a half here in Japan for more adventures with me with Sarah we’ll see you again soon how would I say that oh uh Arigato thank you for joining us bye-bye