Kairakuen, here held the most popular Ume festival!

Have you ever thought to go out to see Ume, plum trees?

I've never, becase I do not have places they got gathered around my place so that the idea simply never occurred to me. As I moved to live in Ibaraki, I got to know Kairakuen, a big Japanese garden. And I got to know Ume festival. There are a lot of Ume out there just as cherry blossoms every place in Japan.

Mito-city where this Kairakuen located, is an old city where strong prestigious Daimyo(warload) had governed. The ruler made it becuase he wanted to enjoy things together with his people. The word "Kairakuen" consists of three characters which means "kai" means "together", "raku" means "enjoy", and "en" means "garden". I like the idea!

Ume(plum trees) has smaller flowers than those of cherry blossoms, and more petals for a flower. It is popular for us to go cherry blossom viewing, but not so much about Ume. It is simply because there are fewer gardens which gather them at one place, and also Ume are fugacious.

Ume were at their best! They are so beautiful and smell nice!

Also there were many kinds of them. They had red, white, pink... so pretty!

There were a lot of Yatai(food stall), and we had Okonomiyaki(japanese pancake containing chopped cabbages) and Takoyaki(similar to okonomiyaki but containing small piece of octopus), and local miso dumpling. They were so delicious!!! We were just like the proverb, "Hana yori dango" - I translate it here "miso dumplings are more than Ume" haha-

Kairakuen itself is not so big, but people extend it with planting a lot more Ume or other flowers around it. Now Kairakuen is a big park! There is lake too and you can see white and black swans there! (It was my first time to see black swans. How exciting!)

I heard an interesting story from a local friend. The city give Ume sheedling to all citizen to each ocaasions such as entrance into school and coming of age.. so the city is over with ume! How nice! I think flowers makes people happy. It is one of the important aspects of life to stay with natures and enjoy them.