It has been a month of adventure coupled with a month of sitting around twiddling our thumbs in various hotel rooms on either end of our cross-country move. But don’t worry – I won’t make this month’s photo anything hotel-related. 🙂

I was so SO very excited to see the garden at the Adachi Museum of Art outside of Matsue and, thankfully, it was every bit as gorgeous as I had heard it would be. But sometimes, the most beautiful gardens are the most unexpected and unheralded, like the one below:

This is the garden of the Yakumo-an soba restaurant right near the old Bukeyashiki samurai house north of Matsue castle. I don’t know what it is about this composition that just seems so … zen … to me. The color of the fish is the perfect contrast to the white-walled building at the rear, there’s a touch of green to reflect the summer and the water is incredibly soothing. Sometimes scenes like this just come together. I doubt this garden is ranked on any list but it will be one I remember for quite some time.

The soba was also quite memorable so I’ll blog about that later on in a separate post!