The Japanese Friendship Garden, named RoHoEn, is a joint project of the City of Phoenix and our Sister City Himeji, Japan. Himeji Mayor, Matsuji Totani proposed the garden in 1987 to cement the bonds of friendship between Japan and the United States and particularly between the peoples of Himeji and Phoenix. 

The Himeji Gardening and Construction Contractors Association was formed for the specific purpose of designing and constructing the Garden. In the ensuing years, the group has made dozens of visits to select the site, investigate soil and climactic conditions, determine suitable plantings, select rock, and oversee construction details.

The teahouse and surrounding tea garden were completed in November 1996, the 20th anniversary of our Sister City relationship. The project features a stroll garden, tea garden, a stone garden, and a courtyard garden. All of the decorative features that you see in the garden and the hundreds of thousands of hours required to design and guide its construction are gifts from the City of Himeji and its citizens.

Click Here for the Japanese Friendship Garden website. 

Arizona  

Arizona is peerless, her breezes are soft,
And mostly her sky is surprisingly fair,
For "the sweet little cherub" on duty aloft,
Controlling the tricks of the ambient air,
Is vigilant always--good-natured enough
In doing his meteorological stunts;
Yet sometimes we think, when the weather is rough,
That he tries to dispense all his product at once.

Far down the broad continent's vertebral line
Old Boreas batters the earth with his flail--
The heavy snows fall in the forests of pine,
And the zephyrs give way to the bellowing gale.
But here, in the Salt River valley below,
The air is as warm as the breath of a child,
Not even the tiniest flakelets of snow
Suggesting the winter, uncanny and wild.

The roses are with us the round rolling year,
As rich and as regal as Persia can boast--
Every flower that is found in the Valeof Cashmere
Abloom at its best when we prize it the most.
And then--the ripe oranges, certainly these,
So large and so luscious, so yellow and bright,
Are the apples of gold from Hesperides,
Grown only where life is a dream of delight.

In lauding the charms of this marvelous land,
The green of her valleys, the fruit of her vines,
Her beautiful mountains, her scenery grand,
Her herds and her orchards, the wealth of her mines,
The worth of her people, we make no mistake,
For the whole world attests what so long has been true--
Arizona was worthy and ready to take
Her place on the roll with her star in the blue.