gongendo & ueno

From where we live it was about 2 hours to Gongendo, which is located in Satte city, Saitama.

Along the 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) long bank there are supposedly 1000 cherry trees.

The volunteers that take care of this area, plant the rapeseed (the yellow flowers) to bloom at about the same time as the sakura.

This area reminded me of Yawata in Kyoto.

This looked like a river with petals floating on it, you aren’t allowed to go down, but I think it was a dry riverbed.

We brought breakfast (a musubi which we ate on the train) & lunch : tonkatsu + cabbage + yukari musubi because I wasn't sure if they would have vendors...FYI there were a lot of vendors

I found a vendor selling baby castella that was in the shape of Hello Kitty...12 for 400 yen (tax included)

There were 2 other vendors selling baby castella too!

We also had coffee and yomogi dango from another vendor (no photo)

There were quite a lot of people, even if my photos don't show it.

We want to come back to see the hydrangea in June and the spider lilies in September.

On the way home, we stopped at Ueno Park because Satoshi wanted to see this area during this season as reasearch for tour guiding...which was a mistake...it was krazy!

We tried to get out of there as soon as possible!

Still the weather was nice, so it was nice to be out and about.

Photos/videos here if you are interested.