Koko-En Garden is a garden located right beside the Himeji Castle. It is a botanical garden like the Butcher Garden in Victoria, and it has many different type of Japanese garden. From exiting the Himeji Castle, Koko-En Garden is on the West side of the castle. It is just about 300 meters away and take about 5 minutes of walking time.
We went to Koko-En Garden right after visiting Himeji Castle, and this is because when we purchased the Himeji entree ticket, by just adding 40 Japanese Yen, we can the admission to Koko-En Garden. So we think it is a good deal. When we got to the garden, there was pretty much no one there. It was pretty deserted.
We walked in and we were greeted with Japanese style tea house. It looked quite zen and cozy. We could feel a nice chill breeze when entering the tea house, even during the hot and humid summer day. The tea house is built on top of the pond. There were many koi fish in the pond as well.
After exiting the tea house, walked onto a stone bridge over the pond to get to a different section of the garden. There were pine forest garden, water garden, bamboo garden, and many more. Each garden is separated by those old Japanese Edo era walls, which was quite interesting.
We think that the garden is a bit too boring, and lack of colors. This seems to be the theme of Japanese garden, it has less color and more focus on the water feature and the trees. On the other hand, other gardens such as Buchart Garden, it has a lot of flowers and adding a lot of color to the visuals. In addition, we think that the good part of Japanese garden is that it often has a pond with koi fish in it. So we think it can prevent mosquitos from mass breeding during the summer.
In general, we think that if you have extra time on your hand, it is a good place to have a quick visit, but it is not a must visit place like Himeji Castle.
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