Portland Japanese Garden
We went to Portland, OR to visit my Uncle Tommy, Aunt Amy and her mother Kaoru, along with Tom and Amy’s daughter Malia and husband Gordon who now live in Salem, OR. Our last trip to the Portland area was for Malia and Gordon’s wedding but that was in Hood River area and we flew in and out very quickly. Tom and Amy have retired, for now, to Portland, arriving just before COVID. We were the first people besides their children they had seen, since we all were vaccinated by May 2021.
We spent a late morning into the early afternoon at the Portland Japanese Garden , well worth a trip to Portland to see it. For a city and a region with a less than welcoming past for Asians, it is a remarkable achievement, even moreso that the garden only got going in the 1960s when WWII was not so far in the past and occupied Japan was a recent memory. Many of the trees were donated by local residents of Japanese descent who had imported them when rules about bringing in vegetation were non-existent. We have seen the Imperial Gardens in Kyoto, and Portland stands quite well on its own. The different rooms each showing a different character of the Japanese approach to gardens. Below I have selected my top ten or so favorite photos, for the full gallery, following the link at the bottom of the page….
