I’ve yet to come across a deeply religious Japanese person.  The Japanese follow two main religions, Shintoism and Buddhism, but more, so they tell me, as a ritual or a superstition, than a matter of faith.  But they have a new God, which they seem to follow blindly, the God of Electricity.  Monuments to this God are everywhere, even in the most sacred Shinto sanctuaries. They are especially prominent on the mountain sides, as if to permanently remind us that the once beautiful virgin forests have been bulldozed and replaced with crytomeria pines. But it would be unfair to say the utility poles and pylons have ruined Japan’s urban landscape – it would be unremittingly ugly without them.  The phrase ‘urban jungle’ could have been coined to describe the concrete bleakness of Japan’s cities.

Where, then, is the beauty in Japan? Well, not all the architecture is grim – the skyscrapers of Tokyo rival New York and Hong Kong.  There is breath-taking beauty in Japan’s coastline, its lakes, temples and gardens.  But the essential beauty of Japan is in the small details – a simple flower arrangement or an ornament in a tokonoma alcove.

Japan above all is the land of beautiful people.  There’s nothing more depressing than standing in a queue behind an American who has let himself go – by which I mean let himself grow to twice his normal width.  In Japan size zero is the norm; people take pride in their appearance and often look far younger than their years.  Last year, at the Gardening World Cup one of the translators, who worked hard and played hard, had been out all night celebrating her birthday and the designers were wondering how old she was.  ”27″ said one, “No, 24″ said another.  She was 41, but like so many Japanese didn’t look her age because she hadn’t put on the weight which is associated with growing older.  Very few men or women develop the middle-aged spread which we think is inevitable, so that their waist measurement at 60 is the same as it was at 30.  The Japanese look good and to see them makes me feel good and takes my mind off those utility poles.

You don’t expect to see much flower power in a Japanese garden at any time of year and so to come across a rose garden in full bloom in the middle of winter was quite something. I found this lovely surprise at the Fukuoka Botanical Garden, which is set high above the city in the Minami-koen park. The display consisted of several dozen varieties of floribunda and hybrid tea roses, all in full flower and in perfect condition. It gets as cold in Fukuoka in winter as it does in England and they had snow here yesterday, so conditions are hardly ideal. Mind you, should I be so surprised, after being taken aback by the quality of the roses which were supplied to my garden at the Gardening World Cup here in October. The Japanese love their roses, and they certainly know how to grow them.

The roses shown are R. Meigronuri “Gold Bunny” and R Meiridge “Charleston”.

The beauty will come from the plants and in that respect I’ve been very lucky. Last year I happened to meet a lady who is President of the Soroptimists in the nearby port of Sasebo and she has introduced me to Eiko Nishimura, a leading light in the local Rose Society, and also, as it happens, a hotelier like myself. Eiko has grown some amazing roses for me. They are in perfect condition and as soon as I saw them I decided to give them pride of place in Mr McGregor’s flower garden, alongside the sunflowers.

Meanwhile my contractor has grown all the vegetables for the kitchen garden from seed. They are easily the equal of those grown by Mammoth Onion (Robinson and Co) for Chelsea. I got a lot of satisfaction from overhearing one of the other designers showing my plants to her contractor and saying: “Now this is the quality of the plants you should have given me”. For the last few days we have been working after dark under floodlights to get the garden ready. It’s been harder work than I’d bargained for, but I think the garden looks lovely and, you never know, it might even have the right qualities of harmony, balance and spatial awareness.

We are allowed 10 days to build our gardens for the Gardening World Cup. Ten days is little enough time but we didn’t begrudge a moment of the first day today to break off for a traditional Shinto “Breaking Out” ceremony. This is when all the designers, constructors and organisers get together in the Drawing Room of the Royal Palace to receive the blessings of the Shinto priests, who will bring all the participants good luck (not in equal measure, otherwise there’d be no point in the competition) and protect them from accidents. The ceremony involves the pouring of Saki out onto a symbolic pile of soil, which brought a gasp of horror from our Australian contingent, for whom there is nothing more sacrilegious than the squandering of good liquor.

Work began in earnest on Mr McGregor’s garden immediately after the ceremony and all the workers took advantage of their protection from bad luck by discarding their hard hats. Their first job was to dig the foundations for the Dabbin Cottage and the digger had just created a nice big hole when an enormous jet of water shot into the air. They had fractured the mains water supply and the hole soon filled with water, creating an impressive pond complete with fountain. Clearly the breaking out ceremony hadn’t created the right amount of luck. The message for next year will be – whatever the Australians say, don’t stint on the Saki.

The consequence of this shortage of land is that the Japanese live in much smaller and much more expensive homes than we do. Most live in flats; gardens are rare. At least they have the comfort of knowing that the situation isn’t going to get worse, because their population is falling, owing to a declining birth rate. In the UK, in contrast, the population is rising fast, mainly due to the open door policy to European immigration, and their high birth rate. New houses are needed for these extra millions. We have plenty of space to build them without making a dent into our green and pleasant land. When I left England there was a massive campaign under way against the proposals to make it easier to build more houses. When you see what the Japanese have to put up with you can only thank God that at least we have the choice, and yes, we can build as many houses as we need without making any appreciable impact on our green and pleasant land.

This is me 20 years on. Alan Ward used the mould which he had taken of me on August 5th (see http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/08/05/making-mr-mcgregor/), added a few wrinkles, white hair and a beard to create Mr McGregor. I’m happy to say that it looks nothing like me, but it’s a sobering thought that I’m going to get more and more like it when I look in the mirror as the years wear on.

I’ve now got to get Mr McGregor and Alan’s model of Peter Rabbit to Huis Ten Bosch, which is near Nagasaki in southern Japan. They fit into one large suitcase, marked “Fragile” which, together with my other luggage, is quite a handful. The journey needs 5 taxis, 2 planes, 2 trains and a bus. Today I made the first leg of the journey to London and I had a really heartening experience at Euston Station, which I wouldn’t have had down as the friendliest place in Britain. To get from the platform to the taxi rank you need to negotiate three steep flights of stairs and to my amazement, as I stood looking helpless with my luggage at the top of each one a stranger offered to help me carry them down. I thought that only happened to blondes and little old ladies, but on reflection perhaps I look more like Mr McGregor than I’m prepared to admit.

I wanted to use live rabbits in my ‘Mr McGregor’s’ garden for the Gardening World Cup, but the rules wouldn’t allow it. This was a pity because nothing could have been more authentic. Beatrix Potter kept a rabbit hutch by her back door – for the pot of course, not as pets. When I was doing my research at Hill Top the orchard there was overrun with rabbits and there were obvious signs that they’d visited the vegetable patch. The National Trust, who run Hill Top, didn’t know what to do with them, but Beatrix Potter wouldn’t have hesitated. They’d have been shot in a trice and then into the pot.

In the absence of live rabbits I’m very happy to make do with Peter Rabbit. Alan Ward has created this amazing model of Peter Rabbit eating radishes. I’ve taken this photo of Peter in my kitchen garden and I’m hoping that he’s going to look just as splendid in Mr McGregor’s vegetable patch.

“I’m going to completely cover your eyes, nose and mouth and the whole of your face in this purple gunge. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to breathe through these two bits of rolled up paper which I’ll stick up your nostrils. Keep still, or you’ll block the airflow and remember that I won’t be able to see your face turning blue. Then I’ve got three minutes to apply strips of bandage to the paste before the whole mass hardens. After about ten minutes I should have a perfect mould of your face, which I’ll be able to use to make a latex model of your head”.

These very scary instructions were given by Alan Ward, the sculptor, who I’ve commissioned to make a life size model of Mr McGregor for my garden for the Gardening World Cup. We talked at some length about who to model Mr McGregor on. We looked at the pictures in the Peter Rabbit books and it was clear that we needed some-one who was wild and angry . But Alan knew that what we really needed was some-one daft enough to allow themselves to be encased in purple gunge. He suggested me. That was how I found myself being made into a Spitting Image latex model.

The cast was successfully made and Alan’s now going to take it to his holiday home in France, where he’s going to add white hair and a beard and dress me in a French linen nightshirt. And then, I hope, it will look a lot like Mr McGregor and not at all like me.

The Japanese papers have a new kind of weather map, one which shows daily levels of radiation, rather than wind speeds and rainfall. The area which we visited on Tuesday had 2.60 microsieverts per hour at 9am that day, compared with 0.059 for Tokyo. We were on the edge of the exclusion zone, about 30km from the N0 1 Fukushima Power Plant and it can be surmised (although figures aren’t being released) that the radiation levels are even higher inside the exclusion zone.

All agriculture in the area has ceased, but the authorities have hit upon an intriguing idea to cleanse contaminated fields. Research suggests that sunflowers can remove radioactiive material from the soil and so yesterday 30 workers wearing protective masks set about planting 10,000 sunflowers in a 6,000 metre field, where radiation levels of 4.43 microsieverts per hour were detected last month. An official said that this is an area of outstanding natural beauty, where people come to see cherry blossoms in the spring, and they want to lower the radiation levels as quickly as possible to bring people back.

It’s a coincidence, but sunflowers feature prominently in my garden design for the Gardening World Cup, which is being held near Nagasaki in October. They could turn out to be useful.