The Japanese Festival comes to the Missouri Botanical Gardens every Labor Day weekend, and for several years now I have wanted to see it… Today I did. 🙂 The Japanese garden is beautiful, it houses a 10 acre lake and 4-4.5 acres of land that surrounds the beautiful and serene lake. I didn’t get to see the tea house, but the tour guide told us some interesting tidbits about it such as the door to the tea house is raised up, so that you have to step over it to enter… this was to protect the Buddhist monks inside the tea house from intruders bearing weapons (swords!). The monks drank tea because they studied for long hours, and the tea helped keep them awake (go figure!).
Here is a picture of the gravel that has been raked. There is another spot in the garden where there are larger rocks placed in the gravel to symbolize the smaller islands that rest between Japan and China.
Autumn on the steps that lead down to the lake… I was asking her where Momma was and that is why she’s pointing to me.
A beautiful photo of Autumn, if I can ignore the blaring binky! heheh
Looking down at the koi
Autumn pointing to the koi, she was making all kinds of cute noises and sounds at the fish
Taiko (drums)
Autumn got this cute little balloon filled partially with water and it has a rubber band on it so you can bounce it back and forth. What a fun day!
