We are about to visit 8 ports in Japan in 10 days.
The reason for booking the cruise at this time of year is to see the Cherry Blossoms in all their glory. It is a gamble. The exact dates for the emergence of the beautiful pink and white blossoms varies and is based entirely on the weather. And we all know how fickle the weather can be these days.
Our first stop is Fukuoka (be very careful how you pronunce that), and some time before we arrived the city had prounced that this very day would be the first official day of the Cherry Blossom Festival. How perfect was that.
Actually, not that perfect
No one had told the cherry trees
But that didn’t stop the locals having the traditional picnic under the trees
The nearest we came to cherry blossoms was this rather fabulous piece of art in the local Museum of Modern Art
Next stop, Nagasaki, where we took a taxi to Kagagashira Park, the highest point above the city. We saw our first cherry blossom
But they were few and far between
It was a lovely park, but not lovely enough to keep us there.
We decided we would walk back to town. The quickest way to do that was down the the notorious staircase affectionately known as “Jigoku-zaka”.
In English that translates to “the hell slope”.
648 steps later we wished we hadn’t.
But we did pass a graveyard to die for!
Kagoshima is the next port of call. We rented a car and drove ourselves – a first in Japan. Gordon found a scenic short cut, and claimed he knew exactly where we were despite Google Maps showing us as a dot in the middle of a green background with not a road to be seen.
We were on our way to Chiron to see seven houses built by seven samurai (sounds like an excellent title for a movie!) in the 1700’s. The houses are still intact, but it is the gardens that are now the main attraction. Each one remains as it was planned by the samurai.
Chiron is up in the mountains. The weather is miserable, but the setting is still stunning. The samurai houses are hidden behind scuptured hedges and trees on either side of a walkway,
You enter each garden through imposing gateways
A wall behind the gateway ensures complete privacy, so the the house and garden can be enjoyed peacefully
And we thought samurai only knew how to kill people!
On the way back to the ship we passed this entrance to a museum.
Almost fabulous, but not quite. It needs another day or two for all the blossoms to come out.
We will keep trying
Andrews Fabulous Travel Blog 