A highlight of October in Saitama Prefecture are the famous Konosu fireworks display. Early in 2020, the organizers of the Konosu Fireworks announced that they were postponing the infamous Konosu Fireworks. However, there were no further updates until June 23rd 2021. At that time, they said that the fireworks wereRead More →
The Ina Summer Festival and fireworks is actually (currently) scheduled to go ahead in 2022 despite the pandemic. There have been many more summer festivals this year than the last two years combined, but most of them have been in cities rather than towns. It is lovely to see aRead More →
The “Benibana” Safflower Festival of Okegawa is coming back in 2022. Okegawa didn’t even grow the safflower in 2020, but in 2021 they did and even penciled in a date for the festival. But ultimately it was cancelled due to the pandemic. This year, 2022, they have even made theRead More →
Bara no Komichi is an atelier and garden cafe in Ageo City in central Saitama. Bara is the Japanese for rose and Komichi means pathway or small passage. As you might guess from the name, the showpiece of the garden is its roses. But the garden and cafe are openRead More →
Information for the Poppies and Nadeshiko flowers in May and the Cosmos in October at Konosu’s Cosmos Arena Fuikage. Update October 28th: you can now pick the cosmos for free. Cosmos Arena Fukiage On the flood lands of the Arakawa river, millions of flowers grow annually in front of theRead More →
Information for Saitama’s largest rose garden at Ina Memorial Park and biannual rose festivals. The spring rose festival in Ina surprisingly went ahead in 2021 despite a stay at home directive. It was one of the few Rose festivals on in 2021. So no surprises that the festival will takeRead More →
Musenyama, also known as the KDDI Forest, is a greenery trust in Ina Town. There are approximately 100 large sized (roughly 10 meters tall) cherry blossom trees, all about 80 years old, creating a 200 meter tunnel of sakura. Inamachi had a scaled back cherry blossom festival in 2022, nothingRead More →
The Motoara River Cherry Blossom festival, also known as the Fukiage Cherry Blossom Festival, is another of Saitama’s well known locations for celebrating sakura! Especially with locals. The Motoara River in Fukiage may not be in the official top 100 spots in Japan to view cherry blossoms, but it is inRead More →
In Japan everywhere has to be famous for something right? About 90 years ago, Kitamoto decided tomatoes were up for grabs and duly picked that as their something to be famous for. And what better way to celebrate your city’s famed product that a festival. Cue Kitamoto’s annual tomato festival.Read 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 →