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| Isle’s Latest Tourist Spot |
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| Thursday July 24, 2008 The Star / By ANN TAN |
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| PENANG now has a new tourist attraction with the opening of a RM108,000 Japanese Garden near the Botanic Gardens in Jalan Kebun Bunga. |
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| The miniature garden, covering 2832.8 sq m, which is modelled after the Itabashi Garden in Japan, has a winding pathway paved with stones and landscaped with bamboo and tropical plants. |
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State Tourism, Culture, Arts and Heritage committee chairman Danny Law Heng Kiang said the garden was the result of an exchange programme with Itabashi city |
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| “In September 1994, the state signed a joint communiqué on friendship with Itabashi city and a Tropical Botanical Garden similar to the Penang Botanic Gardens was set up in the city itself. |
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“This is an exchange of gardens with Itabashi and I believe it would be another tourist spot in Penang,” he said after the opening ceremony yesterday.
Twenty-six representatives from Itabashi, including city mayor Takeshi Sakamoto, visited the Japanese Garden yesteday. |
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| “Malaysian tourists who visit the Tropical Botanical Garden in Itabashi will have the feeling that they are in Penang. |
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| “Likewise, Japanese tourists to Penang will feel at home when they visit the Japanese Garden,” Takeshi said. |
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| He added that the tropical plants in the Tropical Botanical Garden were grown in a greenhouse to protect them from cold weather. |
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| Takeshi said he was glad that the funds raised in conjunction with a friendship agreement in 2004 were fully utilised on the Japanese Garden. |
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| “We welcome Penangites to visit Itabashi next year in conjunction with our 15th anniversary of the friendship agreement,” he said. |
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