Photo/Illutration Kasumigaike pond is almost in the center of Kenrokuen. The 5,800-square-meter pond is the biggest in the garden. The colors of its waters vary depending on the position from which one is looking. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

The early bird catches the worm--or gets a sanmon discount. How much does the sanmon currency unit come to in our current inflationary environment? I have the answer. It’s exactly 320 yen ($2.30). How can I be so certain? Read on.

If you find yourself in the beautiful city of Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture and intend to visit Kenrokuen, one of the three most famous gardens in Japan alongside Kairakuen in Ibaraki Prefecture and Korakuen in Okayama Prefecture, take the road less traveled.

Set your smartphone alarm to wake you a little before 4 a.m., put on your walking shoes and head over to Kenrokuen just as the early birds start chirping and the sky starts to lighten. It doesn’t seem to be widely advertised, but the 320 yen entrance fee is waived until 15 minutes before the garden’s official opening time of 6:45 a.m. After 7 a.m., loads of tourists and youngsters on school excursions visit, and the tranquil garden, while still magnificent, might not give you the quiet, reflective time it could.

The garden’s first incarnation started in the early 1600s, and successive generations of the Maeda clan who ruled the former Kaga Domain added and deleted features up until right before the dawn of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). The garden was opened to the public in 1874.

Notice the kanji for roku, or six, in Kenrokuen. The garden’s name comes from an old text written by a Chinese poet who stated that a perfect landscape consists of six elements: spaciousness, seclusion, human artifice, antiquity, waterscapes and panoramic views. The culmination of two centuries of reshaping by each successive generation, Kenrokuen has artfully integrated all six of these qualities.

Strolling the peaceful garden that I had almost to myself, I noticed how natural everything looked despite the obvious human touch. One tree, a neagari-no-matsu (raised roots pine), reminded me of giant trees in Yakushima, which also are neagari but formed naturally when an ancient tree died and young shoots around the trunk grew as the original tree rotted away. The Kenrokuen version was created by planting a pine on a pile of soil and later removing it to expose the raised roots.

The Yamato Takeru no Mikoto statue, created in 1880, generated headlines around the world for not having any bird droppings after Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University discovered that it was because of the bronze’s arsenic content. He received an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003 for this.

Kenrokuen, with every detail as it should be, continues to enchant visitors. And the more so in the wee hours.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Aug. 7 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series "Lisa’s Wanderings Around Japan," which depicts various places across the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Meiji University.

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