The Botanical Garden is located at a distance from downtown Kyoto. It occupies 240,000 sq.m. and has over 12,000 floral items.

In 2004 we stayed for about a week in a guesthouse that was walking distance to the Botanical Garden. As it was autumn then, we did not visit it as we expected very few flowers at that time.

This time, upon the advice of the Kyoto Tourism Center staff, we visited it and we will be forever thankful to the staff for recommending it.

Besides the usual sakura trees, the Garden had tulips, poppies, pansies, camellias, begonias and bonzai plants.

We also came across two couples having their wedding album photoshoots and wearing traditional costumes.

There is really nothing like spring in Japan to bring out the warmth of the Japanese who are often very formal and dignified. The couples were wildly applauxded and even though we couldn't understand the language, we knew the other visitors were giving them their best wishes for the coming marriage of the couples.