So in Japan they have a festival for just about everything it seems. Plum blossoms, cherry blossoms, and now tulips. They like their festivals and they like their flowers! Hamura city is just west of base and a few friends and I decided to make a trip to see their tulip fields. When the tulips are gone, then the field becomes a rice field, but we were able to catch them right before they tulips started to wilt. There were a few stalls of food and drinks, but that was about it. It was nice and quiet for the most part, so it was fun to walk through the fields and enjoy a very sunny and beautiful day! Lately it had been raining so much we were just hoping to stay dry, so having it be in the 70s and sunny was a huge surprise! I went on a day Dereck had to work so sadly he wasn't able to enjoy the fields with me. Three other spouses from base were there, along with their little ones. I was the only one with a baby but it was still fun to be around the little tykes for a while. Kim had little Mallory, Shalece with baby Alon, and Karen with Nathan. All the Japanese people stopped and smiled, waved, etc at the babies all day long. They just loved them! You didn't need to speak the same language to know that they were being adored.
Here are the babes, all comfy in their strollers in front of the tulips:
The fields themselves were just beautiful. They were in a low spot between some hills and next to the Tama river. There were rows of different colors and they were all so straight and well kept. I really wanted to just take a bouquet home with me but surprisingly there were no tulips for sale! Just for looking at I guess :-)
After we enjoyed walking around the fields and letting the kids play in the dirt for a while we got some lunch and had a picnic near the river in the shade of a tree. The babies enjoyed having some dinner and getting out of the sun, and the mommy's enjoyed the rest too I'm sure. After lunch we went back to base, all exhausted from being in the sun all day- it really wore us out, we were not prepared! I'll try to let the pictures speak for themselves, but they really don't do the beauty of the tulips justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment