Hydrangea Walk

As you can see from my previous posts and photos, I seem to spend quite a bit of time at Japanese cemeteries. So I don’t know why I was surprised when I ended up at a HUGE cemetery when I went on a seemingly innocent walk across Nisshin to go to their Hydrangea walk. This was on Thursday. So after my semi-retarded day at Osu Kannon, I decided to go hang out with the flowers. The hydrangea is the town, er, I mean CITY, flower of Nisshin. I’ve looked on my little map of Nisshin before and quite a ways away is a “Hydrangea Walk”. They describe it as a winding road with hydrangeas growing along the sides. Hydrangea season is pretty short – mid to late June – so I figured I’d better go before they all dry up. So I started out on my walk across town and 45 minutes later ( ! ) I saw a little statue/shrine down a little path off the side of the road. I decided to take a little detour and check it out.

So I figured if there were beautiful statues and even a waterfall there was probably something better just a bit further on! (That’s how all these stories start out….) And lo and behold, a HUGE staircase through a bamboo forest! There are little temple like flags on the sides so I thought maybe there was a temple at the top…. Had to check it out!!

But I pressed on. Snakes or no snakes! So that first picture? With stairs as far as the eye can see? There were probably FIVE more sets of stairs just like that. Here’s some pictures from my stair walking adventure:

And FINALLY, at the top of all of this there were MORE buddhas, gravestones, grave markers, shrines, etc. But at least there were no more stairs. :) And I finally saw one or two other human beings too!

So, was I lost? Yes. I picked a direction (left) and it turned out to be correct!! It was the hydrangea walk! And just like they said it would be, it was a winding road with hydrangeas growing along the sides. Some of them were starting to die off, but they still looked pretty good. I was really impressed by the variety of colors and textures.

YES – lots of flowers….. They’re just so pretty!!! And you can see by the last picture – most of them were bigger than my head. Or close to it. :) So, after nearly two hours of walking around, what was next? More walking!!! Yes, that’s right, Katie has lost her mind…. Very unfortunate, but what did you expect?!?!? I actually turned around to head home, but I HAD to stop at the little local castle. It was too late though and it was already closed, so I didn’t get a tour inside but the grounds were still open to walk around.

So, that was my big adventure on Thursday….. I hope to go back to the castle someday and take a look inside – maybe that’ll wait for a visit from a friend though… :)