Okayama: Korakuen
Today, I went to Korakuen in Okayama, Japan. It is a traditional-style Japanese garden and is considered to be one of the three most beautiful. As soon as I arrived, I was approached by an English-speaking guide and I accepted his help. As a solitary traveler in a foreign country, it is nice to have people to talk to in English every once in a while...since my Japanese brain muscle gets tired. The park was very beautiful, even though it was a bit cloudy that day (the weather report called for a 60 percent chance of rain while I was in the park, but thank goodness it did not rain!). My guide was very nice and he asked a lot of questions about American culture, my reactions to Japanese culture and food, etc. He was very surprised about how much I knew about Japanese culture, so I have a feeling that most of the Americans/English speaking foreigners he interacted with were typical tourists (this is not a bad thing, obviously...because I would certainly be mo...