More Of The Cherry Blossom Tour

I meant to write this much sooner, but it's been really busy. All the festivals have begun, as the spring has slowly began to fade into summer. But before getting into the crazy of summer, and it is pretty crazy, I wanted to share the cherry blossoms from Hirosaki Castle.

Hirosaki is about two and a half hours north of Misawa and is where we went to see all of the fall colors at the Chrysanthemum Festival. Hirosaki is one of the top sakura viewing areas not only in Japan, but in the entire world. People travel from all over the country to attend the festival.

Since the life of the cherry blossom is very short, we knew about half of the country would be in Hirosaki for the weekend; therefore, we left as soon as the dogs woke up (far too early) and were in Hirosaki by 8 a.m. The Japanese are not early risers, most stores don't even open until 10 a.m., so we pretty much had the park to ourselves.

Weeping cherry blossom tree

Another weeping cherry blossom tree

We made our way through the park and decided to get some festival food. There was a huge line for what appeared to be hot coffee on a stick. Coffee jello is really big up here, so I figure it was that. I was wrong.

Taking a big ole bite of hot soy sauce jello. Gross.

Mark faired a little better with a kabob.

Tempura fried corn - OMGZ!

Dessert - strawberry lollipops. Also called filling rippers. 

These are at EVERY festival and it freaks me out.

Our neighbor taking a big bite of snail. He said it was okay.

Past all the food, there was a cherry blossom tunnel. Trees lined both sides of the moat, and you could even rent a paddle boat. I told Mark he wasn't a real man unless he took me on a paddle boat. I was joking. He didn't get the memo, so I had to stop him in the middle of the boat rental transaction. I'm sure it would have been fun, but it was kind of cold and rainy that day and I really didn't need to fall in the moat.

Red bridges everywhere.

No boat ride for us, thank you.

Guarding the entrance to the tunnel was a tanuki. A tanuki is a Japanese raccoon dog, which is most known for its huge nuts. They're really big...and comical.

My Japanese co-worker said the banner says "Welcome"

While the whole point of the festival was the cherry blossoms, Mark was consumed with photographing the Hirosaki ducks. They are some of the most beautiful ducks I've ever seen.

All in all, we were glad we went, even though it was super crowded. Getting there ridiculously early was definitely the right move; we got to enjoy parts of the festival some of our friends who left later didn't. We definitely liked the Chrysanthemum Festival better because the colors were so vibrant. I don't know if we'll be back for the blossoms next year, but we now have one more event checked off on our list!