Apr 24 (soranews24.com) - With sakura season done in the Tokyo area, it’s time to switch from pink to blue and the 4.5 million Nemophila flowers of this amazing park.
This year, some unusually warm spring weather shifted the start of cherry blossom season up about two weeks earlier than usual. Because of that, the sakura re now gone from Japan’s eastern Kanto region (which includes Tokyo), but if you’re feeling blue about that, there’s an amazing azure pick-me-up waiting for nature lovers in Hitachi Seaside Park.
As you’d guess from the name, Hitachi Seaside Park is located on the coast of the city of Hitachi, in Ibaraki Prefecture. Ibaraki s one of those parts of Japan that foreign travelers often pass straight through as they make their way from Tokyo up to the northeastern Tohoku region, but Hitachi Seaside Park is definitely worth making a detour for, especially if the Nemophila, or baby blue eye, flowers are in bloom, like they are right now.
The sprawling park’s Miharashi no Oka (“Lookout Hillâ€) covers an area of 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres), and in turn is covered with roughly 4.5 million flowers. When their petals open, the landscape transforms into rolling waves of blue that seem to merge earth and sky.