You can travel to visit Kyoto Zen gardens in Japan, or you can seek to combine tropical lush and Zen atmosphere, in this case, it would be hard to find a better place than Akiko’s. It’s peaceful, it’s meditative and it is so vibrant green. It was so hard to leave! We stayed in the Mango cottage, surrounded by ancient mango and avocado trees and beautiful flowers. The cottage was very comfortable and private with a shared kitchen and bathroom/shower just a few steps away. It had huge screened windows providing a gentle, pleasant breeze which was especially refreshing during the night. Akiko was a wonderful hostess and she was so helpful and full of suggestions in visiting local places and meeting interesting people, you could not get that in any travel book. Just tell her what you would like to see or experience and you would be surprised what opportunities might emerge for you. She helped us to meet a local artist Fred Soriano, a retired professor from University of Hawaii-Hilo, who makes his sculptures of lava rocks, they are really worthwhile to see (some of them are displayed around Akiko’s place) and a lot of them are displayed around Hilo, including University of Hawaii Hilo campus. Fred gave us a tour around Hilo showing and explaining his work – it can’t be better than that. And if you are lucky and it is mango season, you would get to taste the best mango you probably ever tasted – we never saw this variety on sale in the US and it was absolutely delicious. Also, visiting the temple (it’s just perfect) and spending some time in it meditating- it made long lasting memories. As we said before, you can travel to visit Kyoto Zen gardens in Japan, or you can visit Akiko’s place- truly magical and enchanting tropical Zen garden in the old Hawaii plantation village. Thank you, Akiko, for creating this place and sharing it with us! We look forward to coming back!