Every Spring my town of Kamiyubetsu holds the most famous event we have all year - the Tulip Fair. Millions of tulips are planted in rows upon rows in our Tulip park, blooming like clockwork at the beginning of Spring and creating a dense landscape of vibrant colors and sweet odors. The fair is a month-long event and the entire town gets involved by planting tulips along the main street and decorating their gardens with tulips. The fair has grown in such size and popularity that our town mascot is Tupid, the tulip. Tour bus companies include the Tulip Park as one of their sightseeing stops so the fair brings in a lot of tourism to my sleepy little town of 5,600 people. Here's the English website for the park.

On a weekend in mid-May I went down to the Tulip Park to check out what all the fuss was about. I'd heard about the tulip fair before coming to Kamiyubetsu so I was eager to check it out. Right in the middle of the park is a wooden windmill that looks like it was lifted straight out of Holland with numerous rows of tulips strategically planted to create beautiful designs on the landscape. There are pavilions selling food and tulip-flavored omiyage (gifts), info booths about the city, a roofed cart giving guided tours through the park, a mini helicopter giving five minute aerial view rides, and needless to say, a lot of tulips! I walked around the park among the rows of flowers, checked out the information booths, had some tulip-flavored ice cream, and ran into a bunch of my students at the park before heading to the museum next to the park to chat a bit with the curator. The museum has a permanent exhibition on the native Ainu who lived in Hokkaido and on the Furusato soldiers who helped populate Eastern Hokkaido. The museum itself has some crazy concrete architecture that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. If you weren't able to check out the fair this year, come by in the Spring next year! I'll still be here to show you around :)