Adelaide Himeji Japanese Garden, South Australia

Just inside the gate is this water bowl
(Chozubachi) where visitors can purify
themselves by washing their hands and
adopting a humble kneeling altitude.

On our weekend away the main thing my partner, Enigma, wanted to see was the Himeji Japanese Garden in the parklands along South Terrace, Adelaide CBD. Fortunately it was less than five minutes walk, just up the road from Hotel Alba, where we were staying.

I don't know much about even my own garden, other than how to cut the lawns and hack away branches when things become over grown. Oh... and to add water during the Summer... so I'm just going to reproduce the first three paragraphs about the Himeji Garden taken from the sign near the entrance:

About Himeji Garden

Himeji Garden celebrates the Sister City relationship between Adelaide an the ancient Japanese city of Himeji. Situated 480 kilometres south-west from Tokyo, Himeji is renowned for the oldest wooden castle in Japan registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983.

Opened in 1985, the garden is designed on Japanese garden principles but with adaptation to the Adelaide climate and plant availability.

Two classic Japanese garden styles are combined here - the 'senzul' - a lake and mountain garden where water and the imagination create images of vastness and grandeur, and the 'kare senzul' - a dry garden where rocks and sand evoke the presence of water, even the sea itself.

The main lake is the center piece of the garden.

The main lake, the 'senzul', is the center piece of the garden. Watch for turtles!

Walking Around the Garden

Free to enter, how much time you spend here will likely depend on how engaging you find the space to be. It's not a large garden by any stretch so a casual stroll through, stopping to admire the various picturesque vantage points is probably not going to take much more than 30 minutes at most.

The peaceful nature of the garden is emphasised to be respected so if you're looking for a quite place to meditate and enjoy the sounds of the waterfall, and nature, then you'll be rewarded.

The Sea of Sand, the 'kare senzul'.

It's an especially good space for photography with almost every angle likely to be a good photo. No doubt the photos I took while in the garden are probably ones that have been taken by many visitors... including you, if you go. They're just too good not to take.

Honestly, for me it was mostly a photo opportunity. For Enigma I think it was a little more of a spiritual experience, which you definitely get a sense of, in the same way you would if you walked into a religious building or space.

Either way it is worth a special visit just to experience. Tours can also be arranged if you'd really like a more detailed appreciation of the garden and how it came to be.

Although the garden has this spacious lawn area I suspect it's a space for more meditative
pursuits like Tai-Chi or Yoga because weddings are not permitted.

Comments

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

What a Future with Flying Cars Might Look Like

Jetsons Style Flying Car - Image by TET & Leonardo.ai Regular readers of this blog will know that flying cars have been a recurring subject over the years. I even collected all my posts into a book you can buy on Amazon Kindle called Where's My Flying Car? The development of a true flying car is a fanciful one, largely because we've yet to come up with anything that actually looks like a car that flies. Most serious projects that even make it to a prototype are either small planes that compact into something you might drive from your home to an airport (if they don't have any vertical landing and take off (VTOL) capability) but you wouldn't drive to you local supermarket for the weekly groceries run, or they're some kind of drone/helicopter configuration with so many propellers you'll worry about shredding pedestrians who get too close. The dream is something that looks exactly like a car but can drive on a road, or hover (kind of like Luke Skywalker's ...

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart...

West Beach Skatepark, Adelaide, South Australia

Main Vert Ramp, West Beach. West Beach Skatepark , Adelaide, South Australia, is one of my favorite skateparks, even though I can barely skate anything in it well. Most of the park is way above my ability. Located not far from the end of the runway at Adelaide Airport it can be a bit disconcerting seeing how low the planes get as they come in to land. From certain vantage points you'd swear they're about to crash into the park instead of fly over to the runway. The park is nearly an hour's drive from my house in Gawler so the only time I get to visit is if I'm dropping my partner off at the airport (which is a rare occurrence). This particular day was a hot 41 degrees celsius. I didn't think I'd skate but the heat guaranteed the park to be virtually empty (except for one other skater who lasted about as long as I did before giving it away). Below is a video with some highlights from my, about an hour long, session. As you can see, my ability is l...

How to Transfer Any Line Art to Your Griptape - Easy Skateboard Griptape Art Tutorial

Dog Star Griptape Art by TET Griptape art is once again gaining popularity amongst modern skateboarders. For those of us who have tried to create our own griptape art, using paint pens, you'll know reproducing your design onto the grip, without making any mistakes is incredibly challenging. Mostly because you just have to go for it and draw the design freehand, with paint pens, directly onto the griptape. You can make the odd mistake here or there but if you get the proportions of the design completely wrong, it can be very difficult to fix. Often you just have to live with the mistake. To address the problem I've come up with an easy way anyone can transfer a line art design to their griptape, removing almost all the anxiety of getting the proportions wrong. In fact, you could do this with any line art design, even if you have no drawing skill at all. Watch the video below to see my technique in action and/or skip past the video where I highlight the basic steps to get your de...

Tesla Unveils Optimus Robot Prototype and Second Generation Prototype - Movie, iRobot, May Be a Documentary?

Tesla Optimus Prototype One, Development Platform. September 30th finally rolled around along with Tesla A.I. day and the unveiling of not one but two Tesla Optimus Robot prototypes. Which was quite a bonus since we hadn't heard anything much about these robots when I wrote about them in July of 2022. Before revealing the first prototype, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, made a point of managing everyone's expectations, just in case anyone was thinking they were about to see anything close to the actual human concept 'robot' we saw last year. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting that. Prototype One - Development Platform The prototype that walked out on stage, for the very first time without ever being tethered to anything (apparently), was still incredibly impressive despite not being streamlined and highly refined in its capability. It walked quite well - eerily similar to the first generation robots in the 2004, Will Smith movie, iRobot , and even did a bit of a dan...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog