Gyoda’s “Hanachozu week” starts again tomorrow. And you cannot visit Gyoda’s hanachozu (floral font / floating flowers) without visiting Gyoda Hachiman Shrine. Not only is the shrine one of Saitama’s most prominent, it is home to the piece de resistance of the monthly hanachozu week in Gyoda. Moreover, it isRead More →
According to Yoshimi Town, not only will there be no Cosmos Festival in 2022, there will be no Cosmos Festival ever again. And they are not planning to even grow the cosmos this year or ever again. It is so sad, but who knows – maybe they will reconsider inRead More →
There are at least three places you can currently see sunflowers this last week of September (2021) ~ start of October. In this post, I will introduce one of them. It is a tourist sunflower field with parking and facilities such as toilets. The other two are in Okegawa andRead More →
Begonia are called “Shukaido” in Japanese, ‘a flower that blooms in Autumn’. As such they are a harbinger of Autumn. I went to visit my favorite spot for begonia on September 1st, 2021, to welcome Autumn. I was on my break from blogging at the time (haha) so I didn’tRead More →
The 2023 fiscal year (from April) information is now available on the Gyoda City website. I will eventually update this post with that information and republish as new as I will be making quite a few changes. Please bear with me while I get through the cherry blossom season first!!Read More →
“Hisashiburi” as we say in Japan for long time no see! I will cut to the chase – Insaitama will be around for another year after all. And here’s why! A lot has happened in the last month since breaking the news that I was closing down the blog. FirstRead More →