Garden on Nanikore

Rose Gardens and Biker's Paradise

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 04:32:29 +0000

A few months back I happened to have a day off on the same day as my partner - what luck, it’s as if we planned it - so we headed out on the bike to do a beach-side run down to the Akao herb and rose garden to a relatively new café, before heading back home.

The beach road run out was as nice as ever though we were planning to stop off at the Seisho Bypass west bound service area and take in the ocean view, but since there’s a typhoon incoming and the swell was already kicking up with waves almost reaching the road, it seemed they’d decided to close the service area (I found out later the whole place is being refitted anyway), so off we went straight to the Akao Rose Gardens.

First off, I should say it wasn’t what I expected. I expected some small, over-priced little garden exploiting drivers and riders on the coastal road desperate for a stop and some distraction.

Actually what we got for our 1,000en each, was a shuttle bus up the mountain side to the top of the gardens, and from which you can amble back down through probably a couple of kilometres of gardens back to the entrance.

At the top then, perceptions changed - it is a modern, beautifully set garden, starting with a large and beautiful manicured Japanese style trees set amongst the raked stones of a traditional garden ( karesansui). There’s also a glass and natural wood cafe, co-designed by Kuma-san, well known for his work on the new Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

One thing this place completely understands is the Instagram visitor, with several areas explicitly pointing out that would work great on the Insta, especially the great ocean views.

From that top area, the gardens become more European, with some spaces distinctly English and then into further terraces with more French influence for example. I was surprised just how big it was and even though we were somewhat out of season, also how many people were working there, and how much there still to see.

The initial bus to the top makes sense, and the walk down through what is a kind of natural valley is actually quite relaxing, and we arrived back at the bottom ready for a flask of tea back at the bike. There’s also an Italian restaurant and cafe there too if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

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From the Gardens we took a few nice mountain roads including the Yugawara Parkway, up to the Hakone area and a café which had opened a few months earlier, around May 2019, called Biker ’s Paradise South Hakone [Google map link]. They took an old and closed down restaurant, and revamped it into a very stylish bikers café, rental and event space, with plenty of bike focussed parking.

Inside it’s gotten a very nice atmosphere - sofas, benches, natural wood tables, brass bar fittings, it all looks and feels really good. There’s a vinyl music system at the back (not fired up when we were there), a small gear shop, magazines and a selection of Suzuki Katana bikes around. Even the toilets are very stylish.

Two things to note: the drinks and food prices are not cheap. Also, whilst parking is sort of free, you pay 500yen for a coupon which gets you 500yen off next time (?). They have English speaking staff, and we tried it in both English and Japanese and the reasoning behind it isn’t very clear, but you end up paying 500yen to be there, which you sort of get back next visit. If something needs explaining each time someone arrives, chances are it’s not a good idea.

As the café is owned by rental819, or one of the numerous other great roads up there.

Overall I liked the café; it’s a great place to meet up with people and hang out in a stylish environment, with more scope to meet people than other local cafes in the area. I would think its local competition would be the Anest Skylounge, just a few minutes down the road, which is potentially better known and has a good view of Mt. Fuji, but has had multiple owners who have done little to update it, and yet it remains highly frequented by car and bike enthusiast groups.

As an addendum on this post, we went before some of the heavy typhoons which swept the region in 2019, and at one point the main road which the cafe is on was closed on one side, and we rode through road-wide water on one occasion to get there. Fun, but you should be aware!

The Garden

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:34:40 +0000

Firstly, I’m not a horticulturalist. What I know about gardening in general you can probably fit on the back of a postage stamp, and not a large one at that. However, I’m keen to learn – my parents were always good about the garden when I was young(er) – and I’d like to get better at it.

Therefore, I thought I’d do a quick update on our ‘garden’. That’s in quotes as it’s a rectangle of land sandwiched between the house wall and the car parking space, being about 2m by 6m, so it’s not quite a garden by many non-Japanese senses, but here, it is, and I’m very happy about it.

To put in some back story, when we moved in, it had some very sick looking grass in it, two old conifers, and a rapidly aging fir tree which the salesman was oddly proud of. The house had been a model house before we bought it, so the garden was near the end of it’s intended life. I nursed it all along for the first year, keeping it maintained and as green as possible, then at the beginning of 2010 I ripped out the grass and the conifers. I left the fir tree, but I think I’ll need to replace it this year or next – likely for another since it’s nice at Xmas time. I’ve also put down half of a stepping stone path for getting around the house, which the kids can jump along, but was simple to lay, and doesn’t affect the drainage. I’m hoping to get the second half done at the end of the month.

The idea has been to turn the space into a vegetable / herb garden, mainly to provide a bit of education and entertainment for the kids, but also because I hated looking at dead grass, and the idea of being even a tiny producer of my own food interests me.

So the tomatoes and the roses went in around May (2010), and both did well – really well. We tried some asparagus too, and it came through, but never seemed to flourish. Then I was looking at some other items which went in in late September as an Autumn crop. The roses are obviously a more decorative touch on the exterior to hide the small wall.

After that overly successful summer for the tomatoes – I think in all we had well over 100 great tasting ones, not counting the ones which fell or burst on the branch – I hacked those behemoths down as they were threatening to grow in front of the door, and have slightly moved the 2nd. generation, which was from a couple of tomatoes we re-planted nearby, to near the fir tree, though one more has spawned in the old site which the offspring quite likes the idea of. The wind has damaged the one I moved so I’ve tied it up as best I can until after the winter.

For the late / Autumn crops, I decided to go for my first herb – parsley, as well as onions and carrots. I wasn’t really sure how well the parsley would grow or even how big it would get, so I put in quite a few seeds from the garden centre and four plants grew so I’ve had to remove three because that last one consistently is growing well and spreading so no worries there, and it smells and tastes great. I’m even giving some leaves away.

The onions seem to be growing well, and I think I’ll pull one or two out and see how well developed they are over the next week. This is a sign of my ignorance of the growing seasons, or at least spotting readiness for vegetables. I need to read up on that; it’s simple with tomatoes, but not so much with root veg.

Sadly the carrots didn’t seem to go anywhere. I’ll leave them till Spring to see whether they just didn’t feel like it at the time, or whether they failed because of where they are in the garden since the garden is generally south facing, but due to a short wall, one side gets slightly less sunlight time than the other.

So for 2011, the tomatoes, onions and parsley will stay, I’d like to keep or retry the carrots, and I’d actually like to grow some Japanese produce like daikon sometime.

More news when it happens.

Invasion of the Mushrooms

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:38:47 +0000

I must admit to not usually feeling that a vegetable (or fungi) is worth a comment on, but I was fairly impressed, bordering of blown away, when I saw that in the two flower pots near the front door had over ten huge mushrooms in them yesterday night, where only three days earlier there had been none. It is the Great Invasion of the Mushrooms!

I’ve removed them for fear they may be undesirable, and assume they got in there via spores from somewhere, perhaps in the soil. I have weighed LH’s opinion that they may have grown from the marrow of some massive insect which has been buried in the bowl, but the whole concept frightens me too much. I must have cut an odd figure, stood outside my house doing some gardening, in the dark, with a headlamp on, and effectively harvesting mushrooms.

Anyway, there we have it, I’ve managed to achieve a blog post about mushrooms, and not a single hallucinogen oriented comment.