18/08/2026
Picture a sky-blue Victorian mansion crowned with a domed tower, rising beside a quiet Japanese garden in Mie Prefecture. That's Rokkaen in Kuwana, and the second I stepped onto its lawn, my jaw genuinely dropped. Completed in 1913, it was designed by Josiah Conder, the British architect behind Tokyo's legendary Rokumeikan. A pastel Western villa fuses with an elegant Japanese residence and a strolling pond garden, preserved almost exactly as built. It's a National Cultural Property, yet still feels like a secret. As inbound travelers trade crowded Kyoto streets for slower, regional escapes, Rokkaen is exactly what people are searching for: uncrowded, photogenic, quietly moving. Standing beneath that turret in the breeze off the Kiso River, I felt real stillness.
©三重県観光連盟 www.kankomie.or.jp
