Flower Festival

Two things people in Hokkaido really like are flowers and festivals.  Yesterday we went to Sapporo for both things in one event – the Sapporo Flower Festival.

We dilly dallied on the way to the train station looking at things and taking pictures and arrived at the train station at 10:36 am for the 10:35 am train.  Oh well, the next Sapporo train was at 10:56 am.  After we were on our way, we discovered this train was the semi-rapid train and we had tickets for the local train.  The conductor was happy to collect another 1200 yen from us and we arrived in Sapporo quickly.

The Festival continues through the first of July and is being held in Odori Park, the same place as the Dance Festival a couple of weeks ago.  There were so many flowers!

There were many plots of packed flowers.  This may have been a competition or maybe it was just displays made by different groups.  We never know things like this.

There was another area with displays of porches or patio areas.

We liked the small container displays best.

In a large tent was a horticulture display of orchids.  We saw an orchid show at the NC Zoo a few years ago and it was nothing compared with this.

We were sitting down having a snack and a man from Sapporo came up and started talking to us in English.  I know it is hard to believe but total strangers do like to practice their language skills with us.

There were flower and plant vendors, food and beer vendors, and arts and crafts vendors.

We saw people in kimonos.

There was a stage with traditional Japanese music as entertainment.   The woman was singing traditional Japanese folk ballads, called minyo.  The instruments were the shamisen and the shakuhachi.

There was another stage area with children doing flower arranging.

There were several “characters” around the park.

We saw some well dressed dogs and a few naked ones (sorry, I can’t put naked pictures on my blog.)

 It was a very family friendly festival with a fountain and sliding area for children.

You’d think this was a full day, but we went to the Ainu Museum and the Botanical Gardens after we left Odori Park.  I’ll save that part of the story for another day.