Bamboo Plant Holder and Water Ornament
I went to Rakujuen Park and Zoo in Mishima, Japan the other day. I didn't expect much; it was more of just doing something new. The park contained a few animals such as parrots, a lesser panda and a couple of alpaca. The most famous animal in the mini-zoo was a monkey called 'Lucky'. This monkey run amuck in the area of Susono, Mishima and Numazu during the summer of 2010. The monkey entered several people's houses, stole food and bit a few old ladies. The story amused me at the time; old ladies in the area feared monkey attacks. It took the authorities 2 or 3 weeks before they eventually caught the malicious monkey. As a punishment he was put in the zoo and called 'Lucky'.
Seeing Lucky was most disappointing. His spirit was broken by captivity. His shoulders were hunched; he looked vacantly at me looking at him.
On leaving the park I noticed a clever use of bamboo. At the entrance to the park were a cluster of wide upright bamboo poles. From the hollow tops were small plants. In a another part of the entrance were similar upright bamboo culms this time with plants coming from holes cut one node down from the top with again plants coming out of the top.
The structure of bamboo into separate compartments at the nodes perfectly allows for bamboo to hold plants. It would have been possible to use taller bamboo and to hold several plants. The Japanese, however, are firm believers in 'less is more' and would consider no more as two plants as needed to complete the bamboo.
Around the edges of the entrance garden were horizontal culms of bamboo of the same circumference laying on the ground to mark the path. Again holes were cut out of the bamboo and plants placed inside. I have to say that I was more impressed with the entrance to the zoo then the actual zoo itself.
On walking back to the train station I spotted another ornamental use of bamboo, This time in a water feature. Vertical bamboo culms with holes in were clustered in a pool. The bamboo had small holes in it. Clearly at night lights inside the bamboo were turned on to create a speckled effect. Not as interesting as the bamboo/ plant idea but nevertheless it was very encouraging that here they had avoided using just concrete or maybe a rock to create a water feature.
This day reminded me how gifted the Japanese are in using bamboo for ornamentation in a garden, and how bamboo is traditionally used in the water feature where the weight of water makes a piece of bamboo tip into a stone cistern. It was good to see this tradition alive and well in Mishima, which was free once again of the menace of the old lady biting monkey called Lucky.
