This is one of my favorite shots from yesterday’s visit to the Japanese Peace Garden at the Nimitz Center. Not that I think it’s possible to take a bad photo there. The place is just so beautiful. It’s one of my favorite places in the whole world. Never fails to make me feel peaceful and centered … and in awe of the beauty around me.
If you want to know more about the garden and it’s creation, it was just featured on Central Texas Gardener this week, and the video has been posted online. It will fill you in on the history of this wonderful gift given to my hometown (and the American people as a whole) in honor of Admiral Nimitz and his friendship with Admiral Togo.
I was there when they built it. I was 11 years old at the time, and not only was I fascinated with what was going on across the street behind the big rock wall, I was also excessively curious about the Japanese who were there building it. The only people and cultures I’d had experience with up to that point in my life had been German and Hispanic. The Japanese were so different … in the way they spoke, worked, dressed, and even in how they ate†.
Bless them, they never seemed annoyed by the tiny little American girl hovering around while they worked††, not even when I brought friends along. In fact, if I hung around too long, they put me to work planting. There’s a corner of the garden, behind the ropes that keep visitors at bay, that my hands were involved in creating, and I think I left a little of myself there. Once the excitement of the creation of the garden was over, the bench across from that corner became my favorite place to sit and do embroidery … or just to sit and think.
I still feel happy (and proud) whenever I go there and see the irises and grasses I helped plant (the ones along the bottom of the photo and the right bottom corner). In a way, it feels like that’s where I achieved a little bit of immortality. That garden is going to be there long after I am gone. In fact, barring some horrible future crisis, I imagine that garden –and the corner of it I helped plant– will be there forever. Not that I was thinking such lofty thoughts at the age of 11. I was just thrilled to have an excuse to spend more time there … to watch these unusual people building a garden unlike any I had seen before (except in old martial arts movies on late-night TV).
The Peace Garden is a very special place, and it’s open year-round and costs nothing to visit. It’s a little slice of Japan in the middle of a small Texas town, and if you are in the area, it’s well worth visiting.
Side note: The whole Nimitz Museum complex is fascinating and worth spending a day walking through. Right now is not a good time to visit though. They are expanding the museum (by a lot), and there’s a lot of construction going on. Supposedly it will be finished in December (and the Bushes –the whole lot of them, I believe– will be there for the grand opening). It was impressive before, but it’s really going to be something now! But wait until next year, if you want to see the whole museum, as about half of it is closed right now. When the Bush Gallery reopens though, it’s going to be a hundred times more awesome than it was before, and it was really awesome before! You can watch a preview video (in 3D graphics) of what the new building and exhibits are going to be like.
Footnotes- † The workers always had bento boxes of unusual food for lunch. Even sitting around a work site eating their “box” lunches, they seemed so formal to my young American eyes. Almost like eating was a ritual. Sometimes one of them would give me some odd bit of food to try, and though my juvenile palate still preferred mac-n-cheese, that was where my love of Japanese food began. [↩]
- †† I was not your average 11 year, which is likely why they weren’t bothered with me being around. I was a quiet and watchful child, always stayed out of the way, and rarely spoke unless spoken to first. In other words, not much of a bother at all, so long as no one minded being watched intensely. [↩]