A Peaceful, Friendly Garden in Phoenix

For the last day of vacation, I was so pleased that our departing flight didn't leave until late afternoon that I had looked for an activity to do on Saturday morning, like a pottery-making class or a couples massage. I was thinking of our pre-pandemic trip to Portland, OR, when we participated in a free Kung Fu class at the Chinese Garden. So I was delighted to discover a class at the Phoenix Japanese Friendship Garden on ikebana (flower arranging). It seemed like the garden itself was small, so this would give us an excuse to spend more time there. Alas, about a month before our trip, I received an email that the instructor was no longer available, and did I want to enroll 2 weeks later or have a refund? I took the refund, but we still ended up spending over an hour at the garden, mostly sitting on a bench by the water, enjoying nature and people watching. Dear Husband mentioned it was the perfect way to hang onto that relaxing "vacation feeling." It turns out we needed those reserves, because I had unknowingly planned for us to eat "the best pizza in the country" at a restaurant next to Chase Field at the exact time that a World Baseball Classic game was scheduled. Traffic was terrible, and the wait at Pizzeria Bianco was 2.25 hours, so we opted for a taco and a burrito from Sonora Taco Shop, a hole-in-the-wall eatery closer to the airport, and then watched the game on the TV in the sandwich place where we got second lunch before going through security.

This is a kasuga doro, a 10-foot-tall stone lantern named for the Kasuga Shrine in Nara, which was the capital of Japan in the 9th century.

In 1976, Phoenix and Himeji became Sister Cities, and in 1987, Mayor Matsuji Totani proposed this joint project. Completed in 1996, the 3.5-acre site includes a tea house with garden, a stone garden, a courtyard garden, and the stroll garden we walked through.

Its name includes the Japanese words for heron (ro), the bird symbol of Himeji + phoenix (ho) + and garden (en). RoHoEn was designed as a miegakure or "hide-and-reveal" garden such that you can't see all of it from any angle.

The koi pond has over 300 fish in it. In the middle background is the 12-14-foot waterfall, and on the right is a yukimi doro or "snow-viewing lantern," whose roof is designed to catch snow. The stony peninsula behind is is supposed to look like the scaley back of a fish.

From the bench where we sat, we watched a hummingbird visited bushes, gardeners weeding, and other visitors taking photographs of each other. The city is very close, but the traffic noise wasn't bothersome compared to the burbling of the stream and the sounds of the waterfall.

Meet Shachi, a mythical creature with the face of a lion and the body of a fish. In Japanese folklore, he can make it rain. Shachi "gargoyles" were used to protect important buildings from, such as Himeji Castle.

On the left is a stone pagoda (tasoutou) designed to store Buddist relics. It should always have an odd number of tiers.

The four distinct landscapes represented in the garden are low-lying grasslands, woodlands, forested mountain, and stone beach, if you walk in a clockwise direction.

All of the stones, rocks, and boulders in RoHoEn come from Arizona--including the 25-ton behemoth next to the waterfall--except for the blue-grey cobblestones on the beach, which come from Mexico.

From above, the koi pond is suppose to have the shape of the kanji character "kokoro," which means "heart" or "spirit."

The other bit of Japanese culture I wanted to experience in Phoenix, given its proximity to the West Coast, was Japanese soda. You see, one of the comics I read regularly online featured a character who has a crush on another student, so she offered to buy and open a bottle of Ramuné for her (on Valentine's Day, no less). Only there were no words, so I had to look to the comment section to find out what was going on. sjordane explained,

Ramune is a Japanese carbonated soft drink. It was introduced in 1884 in Kobe by the British pharmacist Alexander Cameron Sim. Like Banta, an Indian lemon drink, ramune is available in a Codd-neck bottle, a heavy glass bottle whose mouth is sealed by a round marble thanks to the pressure of the carbonated contents.

I found a short video on YouTube of a family demonstrating how to do it and put it on my Phoenix bucket list. Sure enough, at the Japanese Friendship Garden, they offered several flavors. Dear Husband got the sweet lychee, and I chose the more mellow melon. As you can see, we managed to open our bottles and enjoy their contents.