Have you ever gazed out of a window and admired the garden outside – like a stilllife painting on your wall? I looked up the definition on a still life painting, and yes, a garden can be included – viewed as “a collection of natural objects, like flowers, fruits, and vegetables, which are often included in still life compositions.”
The garden surrounding the ADACHI Museum of Art in Japan’s Shimane prefecture on its main island of Honshu, is exactly that – a traditional Japanese garden with natural objects – massive boulders, bridges, etc – and you view it mainly through windows – huge panes of glass from within the Museum.
This is a garden more famous than the displays within the Museum, and it’s a garden you cannot enter. No garden walks here! Pristine, beautiful, exquisite – and ranked as number one in the “2024 Japanese Garden Ranking”. The win was the 22nd consecutive year ADACHI has been in the number one spot, ahead of nearly 1000 places throughout Japan, including historical sites.
Unlike many gardens in Japan, this one is not an ancient garden. The Adachi Museum of Art was established in 1970 by Adachi Zenko who was born in this area to a farming family. He did pretty well financially, and this was his way of showing gratitude to his home town and the Shimane prefecture. The Museum includes an excellent collection of paintings and other artworks. Though, for me they are outshone by the surrounding gardens.
There are a few small outdoor platform areas where you can step out into the fresh air. Particularly useful for those like me who are keen on photography, and want to snap pics without the glass.
It takes some effort to reach the Gardens. I had presumed they were close to Matsue, but it’s 30 kilometres away. My tip: Go early as this is a popular place in Japan! Beat the crowd! This place attracts more than 600,000 visitors a year, despite its remote location.
If you have a car, arrive by opening 9am time. The car park can take up to 400 cars. And by public transport: The first free shuttle leaves Yasugi at 10 to 9am. Using public transport, you need to take a local train to the town of Yasugi to join a free shuttle bus to get there. The first free shuttle leaves Yasugi at 10 to 9am.
I enjoyed the train and shuttle bus journey to the Gardens , passing through the Shimane countryside.
The Museum shop is worthwhile for gifts – expensive, but there were many items I saw here that I didn’t see anywhere else.
There are also some good cafes at the Museum. We chose Cafe Taikan, surrounded by the Pond Garden. Excellent cakes and other sweets, along with Shimane Beef curry and some light meals. We thought the prices in this cafe were very reasonable. And, despite the the crowd building up at the Museum, the cafe wasn’t packed.
I have read reviews where some people felt it was wrong not to be able to walk in the Adachi gardens. Well, you can walk in just about any other garden in the world – but when they are popular, they can be crowded, and the peace and serenity of a garden can be lost. Yes, here you are not able to do a garden wander. But you can see a unique and magnificent garden presented in its perfect form.
The founder wanted to touch the hearts of people by the beauty of the artworks and gardens. I think he succeeded.
NOTE: International visitors can show their passport for an admission discount. It’s only a 100 yen cut on the 2500 yen admission – but every little discount on a trip is appreciated!
To see more on the gardens check out this video: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/master-gardeners/
This is the last of my stories from my November 2024 Japan trip: I’m putting aside my story telling for a few months as I’m off soon to explore new areas for me, north of Tokyo. I will be travelling right up to a small Hokkaido town on the foreshore of the Sea of Okhotsk where I hope to locate a gelato shop that has won the International best Gelato award in Italy twice! A Japanese producing the best gelato in the world? It’s true! I will do a taste test for you all (does that mean more than one scoop? LOL)
Travelling Therese 
Beautiful place.
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Yes… different and special
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Your post highlights that. Thanks for sharing.
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I found this quite unique that visitors are not able to walk in the Adachi gardens, Therese. But you made such a very important point that would crowds you do lose the peace and serenity.
Very amazing of Adachi Zenko to start this legacy through the gardens that many people can enjoy.
I also really appreciate that there is a free shuttle that visitors are able to access. It gets cars off the road. In an age of climate change this is extremely important. Thank you for sharing. 🇯🇵
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It’s interesting that in Japan we can reach so many places very easily by excellent and safe public transport systems. We have never felt the need to hire a car there on our holidays. It would be a lot more difficult for a tourist to do that in AUSTRALIA or CANADA. We will be soon visiting a town there that runs a small public tourist bus that you call for your pick up/drop off – rather than a big loop bus continually doing a circuit of tourist attractions. I’m interested to see how well it works. Re the gardens – for me it had that old message; stop and smell the roses. You can experience the beauty of life simply by stopping, looking and savouring. Everyone these days seems to be in a rush to get anywhere or to do anything.
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Thank you so much for sharing this, Therese. For the backpacker style tourist visiting Canada it is incredibly difficult to visit small gem locations without having to hire a car. The frustrating thing is we used to have the train infrastructure, but they were ripped up and replaced with highways between the 1960’s and 1980’s. Train travel is now just to major city centers on a limited schedule. Even 10 years ago there was much more bus availability, but routes and schedules are also being slashed. Which ends up becoming more car dependency. I love that concept of the public tourist bus. Offers more flexibility to choose what you want to visit and the amount of time you want to spend there.
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Interestingly in Perth, Western Australia the State Government in the early 1980’s was abandoning what was left of the city’s rail. The Opposition mounted a campaign to not only save the existing lines, but to create a city wide electric railway system. They won and the city now has an extensive metropolitan railway system – and thank heavens for that as Perth’s clogged roads would be even more clogged with traffic. I’m impressed in Japan with the small 16 seater buses they often run in regional areas. In Perth, massive big buses lumber around in the evenings with hardly anyone on board. I’m not suggesting Japan has no flaws – but its public transport services are pretty good. And safe! Those ‘packed in like sardines’ imagines mainly relate to peak hours, and as tourists, we can travel outside of those times. Everyone is incredibly orderly. Don’t look for graffiti here – IF you find any, it’s probably done by foreigners visiting Japan. PS: I do have a lovely memory of travelling by train between Calgary and Vancouver with my 2 year old (now 44) and a friend with her 1 year old in winter! In the days when you could still sleep aboard that train! It was fabulous.
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In the 1980’s I took 3 train trips from here in Ontario to the West Coast. Such a relaxing way to travel.
Japanese, of what I’ve heard take so much pride in themselves. The lack of graffiti, but I am thinking also the lack of litter.
Well done, Perth. Getting cars off the road and replaced with a more sustainable form of transportation is so important.
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The lack of graffiti is amazing. The only time I have heard of it there, it was done by foreigners. They generally don’t have rubbish bins – you are expected to take your rubbish home. You are also supposed to sort rubbish. I saw an instance the other day where a local prefecture opened new public toilets last week, but found someone had left two neatly bound bags of rubbish there. They were upset because it hadn’t been sorted, and now the local council would have to do that.! The other thing that we have been impressed with is that in cafes you are expected to clear your table and leave it as you found it. Cafes generally have little receiving places where you can leave your tableware, etc – and there is often clean cloths to wipe over the table. This isn’t in restaurants, but cafes. Basically, it’s courtesy to the next customer. We love the attitude.
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We could do a lot better. We are a car society in Australia. Husband and I noticed a massive public bus driving around our little town yesterday .. empty. Why they aren’t running a little 16 seater in a small community, heaven knows.
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