The April Blues: Golden Week, At Home

And when I say “at home,” I really mean, “in Ibaraki.”

For the first part of Golden Week (which was really just a three-day weekend), my friends and I headed to one of Ibaraki’s most famous sites:  Hitachi Seaside Park! We were among the horde of hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists eager to see the Nemophila in bloom. Apparently, people even fly in from China and Taiwan just to see these brilliant flowers. Luckily, we only had to travel just under two hours by train.

We visited on April 29th, a breezy, sunny, blue-sky, late-spring kind of day.

I’m not usually one for background music, but if you like to listen while you read (or for this post, scroll through numerous pictures), I highly recommend one of my favorite instrumental pieces by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi:

Hopefully the melody will give you a sense of my mood on that brilliant first day of Golden Week. The sea breeze, blue skies, and sea of blue flowers made it more magical than I ever could have imagined.

Enjoy these April Blues!

Probably the most photographed tree in the entire park

Pale blue ice cream and pale blue flowers!

Surprisingly, (or maybe unsurprisingly, after you see the photos?) Hitachi Seaside Park is pretty internet famous as one of the many places to see before you die: I’ve seen it listed alongside some of the most breathtaking locations on earth, such as in this Buzzfeed article (it’s #6)!

Moving on from Hitachi Seaside Park…

The rest of our three day weekend was spent in and around Kasama, where my friend S lives. We went to Kasama’s local  ひまつり  or pottery festival, which exceeded our expectations. Honestly, one of my coworkers told me that he and his family go to the pottery festival every year, and I brushed off his suggestion to go — why would I want to walk around and look at plates and bowls for an hour or two?

In the end, though, my friends and I  decided to check it out, only to find out that not only is       ひまつり insanely popular, it’s also a wonderful little outing if you are in the area. It reminded me of the craft shows and the art shows I used to go to with my aunts in Connecticut. Plates and bowls were just the tip of the iceberg in terms of featured pottery: there were all sorts of beautiful and crazy things made out of clay (including a few dinosaurs)!

And aside from walking around admiring the craftsmanship of all the pottery, there was THE FOOD. This wasn’t your typical Japanese festival food, either. No takoyaki, yakisoba, and buttered baked potatoes. This was artisan food. It seems like nearly every cafe in Kasama had booked a tent at the festival, and they were serving up gourmet thin-crust pizzas, yuzu sodas, grilled teriyaki chicken and rice bowls, iced coffee, German beer and potato pancakes.

Walking through the sea of blue Nemophila and discovering Kasama’s pottery festival were by far the two highlights of my Golden Week in Ibaraki.

After that lovely three day weekend, it was back to work on Monday (unsurprisingly, there were quite a few absent students) followed by a string of public holidays on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday! My friends and I decided to take paid leave on the Friday and venture a little farther from home…

…to South Korea! But that is for another post.