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| The face of someone who is too hot and too tired |
As we'd already been to Hakata, we went straight to point 3 on the walk, which was Rakusui-en. It was very close to our hotel anyway, so it was quite convenient to be able to skip the walk to Hakata Station. For 300 yen we could look around the little oasis of calm, as well as partake in a little tea ceremony (with proper green tea and Japanese sweets).
It looked so funny, walking along a street lined with towering office blocks and apartments, to suddenly spot a cluster of trees bursting up towards the sky, just about hemmed in by a pretty wall all the way around. Hidden inside was the Teahouse. All of a sudden the painfully hot sun was blocked out and replaced by cool, leafy shade and pretty dappled patches of light. It looked deserted, but it turns out it's just the overall calm, quiet nature of the place, and two lovely ladies were waiting inside a little office ready to take our money and give us a green tea voucher to use whenever we were ready.
The garden is quite small, but just the right size to have a relaxing stroll, and there are benches dotted around that you can sit on while you watch the koi swim around and make comforting 'bloop' noises over the gentle rush of a small waterfall. It was fun to imagine people hundreds of years ago doing something similar.
