Sankaien Garden

The next weekend we headed out to Yokohama Saturday afternoon to visit Sankeien Gardens.  When we arrived, there was an bilingual tour guide who offered to show us around the garden.  He was very excited that we were from Seattle since his daughter lives in Bellevue, so we said yes.  We ended up learning quite a bit that you could not have gotten from just reading the signs so it was a great experience.  

Here's a bit of history:

Sankeien is a traditional and typical Japanese-style garden designed and landscaped by Sankei Hara, a wealthy businessman in the silk trade.　
He reconstructed buildings of historic importance from places such as Kyoto and Kamakura in this garden,which was opend to the public as ”Sankeien”in 1906.

Looking across the bridge to the main house

A typical Japanese room with tatami mats

The rest of the main house

The Ume (plum) trees were already starting to bloom

Abby in front of the tea house

Bamboo that were only about 6 months old!

The view from the observation building

More of the view

The 3-story pagoda

This is called a sleeping dragon Ume tree because it grows out across the ground

The creek

We got to go inside an old house that had belonged to a wealthy farmer and his family.  This was the upstairs where it was filled with smoke to keep the thatched roof free of bugs? (Sorry I can't remember the exact reason, but it was smoky!)

There was a study room for when Samurai came to visit

The original hearth

This bouquet was made by putting mochi balls onto sticks

The pond

Next we headed out to Yokohama's Chinatown, the largest chinatown in Japan. We went out to a chinese restaurant and although tasty, quite expensive.  The funnest part was buying street foods from the various vendors (like sesame crusted rice balls, soup dumplings, steamed buns..yummmm!)

The large torii gate leading into chinatown

The streets were all very colorful and lined with lanterns, banners and other decorations