When Waterbird’s replica takes flight on Lake Windermere it will be an astonishing sight. Its flight will commemorate the first ever flight by a seaplane, which took place here 100 years ago, piloted by Captain Edward Wakefield of Kendal. The flight will, without any doubt, attract the attention of the world’s TV and newspapers and, because it can only take place when the weather is clear and calm, it will show off the Lake District at its best.

This is something which the guardians of the Lakes, the National Park Authority, dearly wish to happen. There is however one snag, which is that in order to become airborne the craft will need to reach a speed of 35mph, which will break the 10mph speed limit which the Authority imposed against massive opposition several years ago. It takes only one minute for the plane to reach the required speed, so the Authority needs to grant an exemption for just one minute. If they grant the exemption they will be roundly condemned by some of their biggest supporters, people who would prefer the Lakes to be tranquil for ever and not receive any visitors at all. It will require quite a lot of courage for the Authority to grant the exemption. Which is about 100th of the courage required of that lone aviator 100 years ago.

The photo shows me with Ian Gee, who is organising the Waterbird flight, to whom I was pleased to be able to donate £1,000 from my Chairman’s charity at the Lakes Hospitality Association.

“Always remember the beauty of the garden- for there is peace”

Jo Thompson, who had the neighbouring plot to mine at the Gardening World Cup last year, where she represented Italy, has to be the bravest designer at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. She has agreed to build a garden around a 1950’s caravan called Doris on behalf of the Caravan Club. In this video she’s shown strangling someone from the Caravan Club, which is almost certain to win her the People’s Award. If she would take the time to strangle Margaret Beckett, I’m sure she’d get the OBE as well.

The video is the 20th in a series called “Three Men Went To Mow,” the three men being James Alexander-Sinclair, Cleve West and Joe Swift. Their videos very successfully send up the designers and presenters at the RHS shows. Number 20 reflects upon the languid pleasure of building a garden at Chelsea, highlighting the perfect caravanning weather they’re having this year- six inches of mud and incessant rain.

Shirley Conran famously said that life’s too short to stuff a mushroom. Not if you follow the Slow Life it isn’t. But I would draw the line at peeling asparagus, which is what Simon Hopkinson recommends in his new column, “Simon’s Kitchen” in Country Life magazine. In fact I think he makes rather a mess of this simplest of vegetables by recommending that the asparagus, once peeled, should be cooked at a rolling boil for 5-6 minutes. I think that after 5 or 6 minutes the tips will be over-cooked and there’s a danger that the rest will be mushy. Hopkinson is led into this trap by his belief that “there’s nothing worse than undercooked asparagus that crunch when you bite them”. I disagree- overcooked is worse. My method for cooking asparagus is to steam them in a fish kettle, melting the butter at the same time, as shown in this photo. After four minutes steaming the asparagus will have turned a bright green colour and the butter will have melted. Nothing could be simpler, or more delicious.

When we were in the audition room last October Martyn Crofts told us that his stage name was Armitage Hanks “because my act is toilet”, but he used his real name on stage in Britain’s Got Talent. Martyn lives in my home town of Skipton and he told Ant and Dec that his ambition was to be asked to open the Skipton Gala, to which Dec replied: “If you’ve got a dream, you may as well dream big”. At the auditions we thought it would be the lovely Hero who would go all the way (See link) but it was Martyn who got to the semi-finals, and was only thwarted by Simon who said that his was “arguably the most stupid act I’ve ever seen on the show”. Perhaps his judgment was influenced by the thought that a man who sang like a Dalek with a saucepan on his head isn’t obvious Las Vegas material.

This video is of Martyn when we were queuing in the early hours last October in Manchester before the auditions took place. The latest news is that although Martyn didn’t get through to the final he has received his invitation to open the Skipton Show. Next stop, Las Vegas.

It can be sobering to see how others see us. Last year in Japan everyone was asking about the riots. They could understand why the Greeks or the Spanish would protest in the streets against their government’s austerity measures but they were non-plussed by news footage of the British going on the rampage just for the fun of it. This year the Japanese are equally puzzled by the news reports that it can take 3 hours to get through immigration control at Heathrow.

We may try to persuade the Japanese that British streets aren’t really unruly and that our civil servants aren’t bolshie and inept, but one image which it’s almost impossible to throw off is our reputation for bad food. You’d have thought that now that our top chefs have international reputations our image would be improving but that doesn’t seem to be the case. A clue as to why this might be can be found at Gordon Ramsay’s Cerise restaurant at the Conrad Hotel in Tokyo. The restaurant is part fine dining and part bistro and I ate in the informal part, where it’s mainly soup, sandwiches and pasta. There’s nothing more British than a sandwich, although my choice of a Chivito on ciabatta with filet mignon (£25) was a curious mix of Uruguayan, Italian and French, with “fried slab-cut potatoes” on the side, which may have been British and were authentically hard and drenched in salt. The meal was dire, not worthy of British pub-grub, although come to think of it, it was very much on a par with Ramsay’s Foxtrot Oscar pub in Chelsea. None of the staff when I ate there were Japanese- they seemed to be from the Indian sub-continent and Africa, but perhaps that was an attempt to give the place an authentic British flavour. They were as inept, but not quite as unwelcoming, as a Heathrow border control officer.

Perhaps I should have chosen the fine dining part of Cerise, although a glance at the reviews on Tripadvisor would suggest otherwise. I’m afraid that there’s no hope for the reputation of British food in Tokyo if this anything to go by.

Where were all the tourists who should have been visiting Matsushima, classified officially as one of Japan’s best three views (see link)? Most of them, it seems, were visiting one of the other “best views”, the famous “floating” torii at Miyajima, which is one the most photographed images in Japan. It serves them right. What they got to see was a massive piece of scaffolding sitting in mud flats, surrounded by people holding umbrellas. Just as the Taj Mahal has to be seen by moonlight, so the floating torii have to be seen at high tide, otherwise they don’t appear to float. They aren’t so impressive when sitting in mud. It’s so ironic that the place people think is surrounded by mud, Matsushima, is looking perfect, with no-one there to enjoy it.

The Shukkeien Gardens at Hiroshima were created in the 1660’s for a feudal Lord in the Chinese style which is now recognised as quintessentially Japanese, with its constituent parts representing broad expanses of lakes, mountains and seashore. It succeeds very well, creating a quiet haven in the midst of a madhouse metropolis. Of course it was wiped out by the atomic bomb, every plant, every structure. Everything that is, except for the one thing which needed to be destroyed, an incongruously ugly bridge which looks as if it’s made out of concrete blocks. When I saw it I thought it must be a modern addition, added as a gesture to the concrete jungle outside. But no, the original wooden bridge was replaced by the seventh Lord of the clan in the Edo period, to the design of a famous Kyoto builder- no doubt the Basil Spence of his day. The bridge is called Koko-kyo, which means “straddling rainbow bridge”, making it the first all-grey rainbow.

The garden was re-opened in 1958 and there is now no sign of the former devastation, except for a small plaque which contains the photograph below and the poignant story of how a large number of survivors took refuge in the garden immediately after the bombing but all died before receiving medical care. Their remains are interred in the gardens, which are as moving a reminder of the bomb as the Peace Park itself.

You’ll never see a photo of the gardens at the Adachi Art Museum gardens with people in it. That’s because people aren’t allowed in it. You can only view the gardens from indoors, for the most part through plate glass. The mood is set at the entrance by a statue of the founder, Adachi Zenco, who has his right arm outstretched, alarmingly like a Nazi salute. He must have been a control freak in his lifetime and now, 20 years after his death, his memory is respected, to the letter. The museum leaflet has an entire page devoted to the things we are forbidden to do, ten in all, including all the usual suspects, such as not eating, smoking or using mobiles, down to “please refrain from talking in a loud voice” (in other words “pipe down Yanks”) and, in case they’ve forgotten anything, “No inconveniencing others”.

Just as we are controlled, so is the garden. You don’t expect anything less from a country where the trains run on time. But the gardens at Adachi take the control of nature to a new level. The result is breathtakingly beautiful. This garden is voted Japan’s no. 1 every year without fail by the Journal of Japanese Gardening. I viewed it the day after seeing the Koraku-en gardens at Okayama, which has the official designation of one of the three most beautiful gardens in Japan. The styles are similar, but the Adachi beats it by a mile for overall impact. But there’s one problem. Japanese gardens are intended for strolling, for contemplation, for zen, all three of which are firmly denied by the control freaks at Adachi.

*Note for visitors. It’s a trek getting to the Adachi Museum- at least three hours by local trains and shuttle bus from the nearest Shinkansen station at Okayama. Unusually for Japan there is very little in English. One trap is that you will only be allowed on the return shuttle bus if you’ve collected a ticket from the museum. The sign telling you this on the bus is only written in Japanese, which means that most Western visitors will miss the bus. Two guide books are on sale, one English and one Japanese- the English version has “Guide Book” written on the cover, but apart from that it’s identical to the Japanese version, and doesn’t contain a single other word of English.

“Midlife Ambition”
My greatest ambition is to document, with utmost meticulousness and accuracy, the entirety of Japan’s flora. I want to publish it as a book and have it distributed in countries around the world, as a way of demonstrating the capabilities of the Japanese and elevating the status of Japan’s scholarship. What I want to do is create something to be proud of, something that will amaze people everywhere. I has to be something worthy of showing off, something that says “This is the kind of work the Japanese are capable of!”
Dr Tomitaro Makino (1862-1957)

When the Japanese established the Makino Botanical Garden and research facility in Kochi their aim was to rival Kew, just as the Gardening World Cup is intended to rival the Chelsea Flower Show. And as with the Gardening World Cup, they had one big advantage – the site. The Makino Botanical Gardens are built on a spectacular hillside location looking down on the city of Kochi and the coastline beyond. Kew is boringly flat.

The museum is vast and comprehensive, covering every aspect of Makino’s life. There’s nothing like it in this country in honour of any of our great botanists. The photo below, taken in the museum, shows a reconstruction of Makino in his study.

If you asked the average English teenager what they’d like for a special treat the chances are they’d say a burger- probably from McDonalds or Burger King. They’s expect the burger to be well cooked through and be served in a bun with fries on the side. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that they wouldn’t ask for the meat to be served raw, with a raw egg on top and no bun or fries. Yet this is what the two teenage children of my Japanese host ordered, at their favourite place, the Korean Barbecue restaurant in Kochi. Their choice was Yuckhoe, the Korean version of steak tartar.

What makes the choice of these teenagers all the more remarkable is that a chain of Korean Barbecue restaurants (not in Kochi ) were in the news last year accused of killing 4 people, including two young boys, and hospitalising dozens of others by serving them raw meat infected with e-coli. The restaurants said that the meat had been intended to be cooked and was served raw by mistake.

If these incidents had happened in England there’s no doubt what would have happened. Mass hysteria would have taken hold, with a witch-hunt of the restaurants involved. The government would have imposed an immediate ban on the sale of all steak tartar “to protect the public” and the official advice would have been not to eat steaks cooked rare.

Where food is concerned the Japanese don’t do hysteria. Their response was to reflect that raw beef had been served to countless customers before these incidents without a problem; that nothing fundamental had changed; that no restaurant deliberately sets out to kill its customers. And so, after a few months when raw beef was quietly removed from menus it gradually returned and these teenagers were able to order their favourite treat without the faintest concern. Somehow, I think the Japanese have got the balance right.