suigo sawara & suigo itako ayame festivals

Saturday we planned to check out the Sawara & Itako Ayame (iris) festivals

It is at the far east end of Chiba prefecture, so it took us over 2 hours just to get to JR Sawara station.

Stumbled upon a Pokemon manhole in front of the station

From the JR Sawara station...there is a shuttle bus, 600 yen, to take you to the Ayame park...about 20 or 30 minutes from JR Sawara station by bus

Along the way you will see these "rivers" called suigo

Admission at the Sawara Ayame Park is 800 yen per person

And there are tiny suigo that you can pay to ride through to see the flowers

You can also see people taking care of the ayame

So pretty!

In front of the park is another Pokemon manhole that I stumbled upon.

To the right of the park is a tiny area where you can catch the water shuttle to Itako or take a tour of 3 of the 12 bridges in the area

We took the water shuttle to Itako...1000 yen per person

This is the water shuttle

Put your life vests on..

I don't ever recall having to wear a life vest and think this might be my first time.

Where the suigo meets the Tone (toe-nay) River, you'll need to go through a water lock since the water level of the suigo is lower than the water level of the Tone River.

It was cool to experience this.

And then the water shuttle speeds up and you travel up the Tone River to Itako

We were surprised at how big the Itako Ayame Festival area was...and it is FREE!

From up on top of one of the pedestrian bridges

You can also take suigo rides and they also have weddings (yomeiribune) at certain times of the day which you can watch if you happen to be there.

I hadn't realized this until afterwards, but Itako is located in Ibaraki prefecture...

There weren't too many choices for lunch, most restaurants were overloaded with people waiting...so we just grabbed some dango from Sawata

I wished we could've chosen what combination of dango we wanted, but they only had pre-packed types...yomogi dango with sweet bean paste 260 yen (tax included)

At this event, they were asking for donations to maintain their park.

I gave them a small donation and received this fan...one side

the other side.

We're glad the weather was pretty cooperative. 

It was originally forecast to rain but we were lucky it only drizzled

Dunno if we'd go to see this again because it was really far! but we were glad we got to experience this.

Suigo Sawara Ayame Festival

1837-2 Ogishima

Katori, Chiba

Hours: 8:00-18:00

*800 yen per adult under 65

**discounts for 65 and older

Suigo Itako Ayame Festival

1-5 Ayame

Itako, Ibaraki

Hours: 8:00-17:00

*FREE

3 minutes walk from JR Itako station