Free Admission to Hakone Gardens in December 2016 - Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj)NEW

The Japanese American Museum of San Jose (JAMsj) is happy to announce a holiday promotion with Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California. For the month of December, JAMsj members can enjoy free admission to Hakone with a valid JAMsj membership card. Your 10 percent membership discount will also be honored in the Hakone gift shop. Please let us know if you need a JAMsj replacement card.

Hakone, which is now 100 years old, is one of the oldest Japanese estate gardens in the Western Hemisphere. Oliver and Isabel Stine built the gardens and original buildings during WWI after being inspired by the Japan pavilion at the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco. Hakone encompasses 18 acres and was constructed by architects whose families cared for the Imperial Gardens in Japan for generations. Whether you leisurely stroll the hill and koi pond garden, ascend the moon bridge, have tea overlooking the dry landscape garden, or enjoy quiet reflection in Hakone's tea and bamboo gardens, you will experience the elixir of art and nature.

Hakone was also chosen as one of twelve historic sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation's "Save America's Treasures" initiative. Other historic sites that share this honor include Thomas Edison's and Henry Ford's winter estates in Fort Myers, Florida; Eleanor Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park, New York; and the plantation home of Andrew Jackson, The Hermitage, in Tennessee.