Odawara II

Wanting to catch another Ume Festival of the year, I invited Chinatsu and Eva to visit Odawara as just like Ogose, it has one of the largest plum groves in Kanto. Eva cancelled on the same day because she was sick so it was just me and Chinatsu this time around.

We met at Matsuda where I saw a mountain-side covered in a sea of pink, making a mental note to check this place out again another time.

It seems, however, that we were a bit too early, and much of the ume weren't at full bloom yet. Nevertheless, they were still quite beautiful and from afar, one can't even tell. Our first stop was the trailhead towards Yumihari Falls.

It was around a 20 minute walk and it was such a fine day so it went by in a jiffy. On the way, we stopped by Soga Shrine to pray. The trail towards Yumihari Falls was a short one but filled with plenty of obstacles to navigate through. We had to do a lot of jumping around the river streams which was really fun. At the end was a long and cascading waterfall, the sign with its name had Inari foxes on it too.

From there, we began our way back and up and around some more trails. We were now hiking around this area which was still surrounded by ume. It was absolutely breathtaking, even more so than Ogose. The amount of Ume trees around Odawara was staggering and it was plain to see just how beautiful this trail would have been if we came at peak blooming period.

We stopped by to sit and admire the view of the ocean and surrounding mountain range while eating our snacks. After the short hike, we finally got our reward which was the Soga Plum Grove, where a festival was surprisingly happening. Here, we got to see tons of ume at bloom, with these tiny birds known as mejiro or "white eyes" because of the circle-shaped whites around their eyes. We approached the festival to see the various stalls but the sound of drums intrigued us so we followed where they led to find a performance happening using what Chinatsu coined as "wadaiko" or Japanese drums, with some flutes and other percussions.

It was such a pleasant surprise that after being mesmerized, we went back to grab some takoyaki and found a place to sit and watch the performance. After it had finished (and our takoyaki), we explored the grove some more talking about life and relationships before I started to blabber on about dreams.Read more