Edging Toward Japan: England's spires and Japan's pagodas -- 2 objects of ultimate obsession May 12, 2021 (Mainichi Japan) By Damian Flanagan Once, while driving across the semi-desert known as the "Karoo" of the Eastern Cape in South Africa, I chanced upon a town of about 35,000 souls called Graaff-Reinet, with which I instantly fell in love. Its streets were charming, historic and everywhere festooned with jacaranda trees in full bloom. Dining there in a local hall one night, with great high beams above my head, I thought I had arrived in a little paradise. Later, I discovered that I was not the first to think so. Apparently, the Victorian explorer David Livingstone had said of Graaff-Reinet that it was "the prettiest town in all Africa."