Roses are red…and roses are blue?!

Sunday Damien and I finally checked out Kani City’s most famous attraction. Hana Festa Park. This park is a kind of theme park for flowers, esp. roses. They have 1000s of kinds of roses. The blooms were about 30% out I’d say which means that in June it should be even more spectacular. We got a year pass so we can come and go as we please and see all the different seasonal changes.

The park is within walking distance (about 45 min) through rice fields and vegetable patches and very old buildings nestled among recently built houses. There were many elderly farmers out getting the fields ready to plant rice. I took a bunch of pictures of them on my photo site (click here). We also ran across one of the scariest looking spiders I have even seen. He was rolling up something big in his web!

The park was really crowded and after seeing the long line of cars waiting to get in I was really glad we walked. Hana Festa is really hidden back in the hills and it is just beautiful. It is really big and there is much more to see than one day can allow. There is a famous “blue” rose which scientists have engineered but it is more white than blue if you ask me. There was a small flea market, lots of food stalls and local vegetables sellers. Of course you could buy roses too! We even had rose ice cream made with real roses. It tasted just like the smell of roses. Quite nice!

We ran into an older English gentlemen there who knows a bit about roses and was telling us about the history of them and showed us what a wild original rose looks like. A rose actually only has 5 small petals. Man has bred them over the years to develop so many petals.

As Damien’s blog mentions we saw lots of caterpillars! I thought there many the other day at Mitake no mori! Well, there were even more at Hana Festa. The park is known for butterflies so I guess it makes sense. There were all kinds of cocoons too. I saw some that were made with tiny sticks. I also saw one that was built inside a leaf and the leaf was rigged up to cover it. We also saw a couple of lizards and a poisonous snake called a mamushi. That was really exciting!! The swallows nesting and feeding their young was really neat too.

On a different note, we finally introduced ourselves to the fellows down below us who have a little used clothing shop. The place is a little local hangout for young alternative kids. The owner is 27 and super genki! He has never been to the US but was quite excited when he learned that’s where I am from. All of his used clothes are from America. He thinks America is super cool. He doesn’t speak much English so he started asking me in Japanese what different things said on the t-shirts and sweatshirts in the shop. It was good practice for my Japanese!! I found one that was from Indiana State University!! I said that was my state and he was quite excited. The hardest one was trying to explain what “Sun Country Cooler” meant on a t-shirt with a polar bear sitting in a swimming pool with sunglasses on. He also had a couple of old bowling shirts and he wanted to know if American’s still use bowling shirts. I am not sure. Does anyone know?