Category: Urban Essays

Rainy season is not so bad, in this case…

We were given tickets to Hakozaki-gu shrine’s flower garden and hydrangea garden, but it was raining every day.
However, the rain stopped. Chris also didn’t have urgent work. The camera batteries were also ready!
So we suddenly decided to go to Higashi Ward.

On the bus, we bought a central Fukuoka one day bus pass for two people (1000 yen). There is a limit to the area in which you can use it, but our starting bus stop and our destination bus stop were both inside the area. (Actually we later noticed it is possible for us to go there without having to transfer. The bus fare in this case is cheaper. We have usually gone there by subway before, but we will use the bus next time!)

And so we went to the hydrangea garden, which is only open during June, after visiting Hakozaki-gu shrine. Actually we didn’t know that it was there until we were given the tickets. It was not raining so there were more visitors than we expected. The age range was higher, too.
Personally, I like blue and white flowers, but in a shady big garden like the one at Hakozaki-gu it’s better to have red and pink flowers. The many white and pale blue hydrangea flowers amid the big trees are beautiful!

After that, we visited the flower garden, which we had only been to in the paeony season. It was our first time to visit there during the lily season.
They added many lilies in pots so there were more lilies than we thought there would be.
We could also see Hydrangea serrata and Hydrangea macrophylla.

I said to Chris that I want a Hydrangea macrophylla or Hydrangea quercifolia, so he said there is no extra space in our yard. That’s true. I agree.

– YS, 19 June 2008

19 June 2008