Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki in early September

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
I know it is late January but it is never too late to share with you my beautiful sunflower photos taken back at 6th of September last year :P

Following my grape picking experience at Tochigi, the day tour brought my friend and I to Ibaraki prefecture (茨城県), Chikusei city(筑西市), for their Sunflower festival!

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
We were damn lucky that the light rain in the morning had stopped and we could enjoy the awesome view with Tsukuba mountain(筑波山)as the backdrop.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan yellow cosmos flower
 They also grow yellow cosmos flowers.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
4.4 hectares of  yellow flowers and a mountain was certainly an impressive view for me. I was glad that I made it even though I was sickly.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
For a brief moment, I revived with that stupid peace sign to take a commemorative photo.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
 These are a kind of rare hybrid sunflowers called the "Tohoku Yae" sunflowers.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
The main characteristic of these sunflowers is that the petals also grow at the centre core.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
 Making them cute and fluffy, like a fur ball hehe~

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan yellow cosmos flower bee closeup
A hardworking bee for our honey in stores later~

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
My friend likes sunflowers too so she decided to buy some back.

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
200yen for 5 bunches is a fantastic deal! Those in the bucket were samples of the amount of flowers you can get with 5 bunches. Of course, those plants near the shed had already been cleared by earlier patrons. So my friend had to go even further to choose the bigger bunches. (we were running late!)

Sunflower Festival at Ibaraki chikusei tohoku yae japan
The gardener helped her trim off excess leaves and believe me, the bouquet was still very heavy. I can probably knock someone unconscious if they had not remove the leaves.

We were tremendously satisfied with the beautiful sunflowers and my friend gave me one in hope that it could give me energy to recover :) I placed it in a glass jar after I got home but noticed some black dirt below the flower the next morning. Suspicious that it could be insect dropping, I immediately tossed the sunflower into my veranda (sorry friend, but I hate insects). I wasn't 100% sure if it was droppings or something from the sunflowers so I didn't warn my friend about it. Unfortunately for her, it turned out to be true. She had placed the flowers in her bedroom and woke up a few days later to crawling worms all over her wall and curtains. Yikes, CREEEEEEPY! Her poor husband had to help her catch all the creepy worms and throw the sunflowers away. Well… there's always an ugly side to beautiful things!

Lesson: Always throw away the flowers if you notice black dirt like insect droppings below.

Here is the link to the complete list of sunflower spots all over Japan if you can understand some Japanese: http://www.himawaribatake.net/list.php

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks zooming! I'm more into flowers than castles, hehehe

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  2. He-he, good report.

    Your camera is awesome, and You are gorgeous :blush:

    I like worm invasion story. I think Your friends are too fast on acting. Why don't they wait a week or two, may be those worms will became butterflies? We can not tell that now :LOL:
    I think that creepo san would like that story. Where is he?

    Have a great day,
    ewww...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hehe, you blush easily ne!

      I'm pretty sure my friend prefers butterflies but not inside her room lol

      You and creepo play hide and seek very well, both don't appear at the same time!

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