A Garden Walk That Showed Me How Cultured People Find Joy

AI helped me translate this post from the Japanese original.

I visited Aman Kyoto.

The interior of the room and the food were wonderful, and after a while there, I found myself drifting away from my busy thoughts and just zoning out, which I’m grateful for.

The garden is the highlight, so we got to walk through it while a guide told us about it.
Apparently it’s a garden that a family who made their fortune in Nishijin textiles (Kyoto’s famous traditional silk weaving) nurtured over three generations.

Buying a mountain as a hobby and spending generations making a garden is an idea that would never occur to me, so it amazed me.

Camellia blossoms fallen on the moss stand out beautifully.

The rocks are laid out like a kimono spread open, so the landscape becomes the kimono’s pattern.
The straight cedar trees act as a frame, and the sky and leaves become the pattern of the obi (the sash worn with a kimono).

Until then they’d looked like ordinary trees, but now they looked even more beautiful.

With each season, nature changes the pattern of the obi.

I was moved that they’d thought it through that far.
And to make something that doesn’t end in your own lifetime, but carries on to the next generation.

A pond reflecting the sky.

The drops of water falling into the well made a sound that calmed my mind.

The view I especially loved.

The path up is a flight of steps.

Climb a little, look back, and it looks like a straight path.

“Just like life, isn’t it?” the guide said.

It isn’t just a pretty garden; what’s wonderful is that it reflects a way of thinking. It feels like it values what people experience as they walk through: imagining, resting their minds.

It was time spent truly experiencing wabi-sabi (the Japanese sense of beauty in simplicity, imperfection and the passing of time).