Shirotori Garden

photo by Nagono · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by Nagono · CC BY-SA 3.0

The hill is Mount Ontake, the stream the Kiso River, the pond Ise Bay.

The garden tells one story only, and tells it to scale: water that starts on the mountain and reaches the sea. You begin at the artificial hill, which stands for Mount Ontake, follow the stream that runs down from it, which stands for the Kiso River, and finish at the pond, which is Ise Bay. In the centre, the Seiu-tei tea house has the outline of a swan landing: ‘shirotori’ means white swan.

Shirotori is a stroll garden around a pond, 3.7 hectares in Atsuta ku, opened on 14 April 1991. Its design recreates in miniature the water geography of central Japan, from the source to the open sea, and it is among the largest in the Tōkai region, the area around Nagoya. The Seiu-tei tea house, almost at the centre, was built by carpenters from Kyoto together with those of Owari, the old name for this area, in sukiya style, that is the plain, undecorated architecture of tea houses. It contains two very small tea rooms, one of four and a half tatami and one of two; the tatami is the straw mat used in Japan to measure rooms.

ℹ️ Open 9:00–17:00, last entry at 16:30. Closed on Mondays and, if the Monday is a public holiday, on the first weekday after it, plus from 29 December to 3 January. Adults 300 yen, free up to junior high school, 100 yen for Nagoya residents over 65; the combined ticket with the Tokugawa garden costs 480 yen. A free guided tour lasts two hours and is the way to get the tea house opened for you; when it is hired out, it cannot be visited. The rules are strict and should be read beforehand: you cannot enter in cosplay costume, you cannot enter with animals, you cannot use tripods or reflector panels for photography, you cannot smoke anywhere in the garden and you cannot go into the water. Eating is allowed, as long as you take your rubbish away with you. The paths are gravel and have a few steps.

🚉 Atsuta · 14 min walk

Sources: shirotori-garden.jp · shirotori-garden.jp · shirotori-garden.jp

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