Add Japan’s Wisteria Festival To Your Spring Travel Bucketlist
If you’re wondering where to catch a profusion of blooming wisteria, these pictures will have you booking a ticket to Japan right away.
The world is in bloom and what a sight for sore eyes that is. As Luther Burbank said, flowers are “sunshine, food and medicine for the soul,” which makes Japanese people extremely lucky. As well as those famous pretty, pink cherry blossoms, which are almost synonymous with springtime in the Pacific Ocean island, they are blessed with beautiful wisteria. The flowering plant, considered one of the most stunning in the world, comes in a riot of gorgeous colours like pink, purple, yellow and white. And Japan’s Wisteria Festival, a month-long celebration of the flower’s beauty, is the perfect place to see it in all its splendour.
Every year, thousands of visitors make their way over to the Ashikaga Flower Park for the Wisteria Festival, or Fujinohana Monogatari Outou Matsuri, to see the beautiful and magical multi-coloured cascading flowers. The park, which is situated in the Tochigi Prefecture, just a two-hour train ride away from Tokyo, has over 350 fragrant wisteria (fuji) trees within the area that’s over 90,000 m² with three trellis areas. The park boasts an 80-metre long tunnel with white wisteria trees lined up on either side, known as the Kibana wisteria, as well as a 150-year-old tree named the "Great Miracle Wisteria," which is spread over a 600-tatami trellis area. There are other floral spectacles to feast your eyes on too, like domes, pyramids, arches and a huge screen with climbing fuji. What’s more, there are light-up displays at night, which gives the park an even more enchanted forest feel.
Just like you can enjoy sakura cakes if you’re in Japan for the cherry blossoms, visitors to the festival can get a taste of wisteria too, with purple wisteria ice cream and even wisteria noodles available to try. Wisteria lovers have the added advantage of having a whole month to plan to indulge in the gorgeous blooms, as opposed to the touch and go situation with cherry blossoms. The festival ends on 21 May.
