TacoCat’s Travels #104 (Japan 4.0: Fukuoka): Pedaling through the Rose Garden 🌹

April 2021 · 5 min read · Sasebo

Hey Hive/Steemit!

So if you didn't catch the last couple of posts, we're currently on a journey in Fukuoka that we went on back in May 2017! Neither of us had ever been to that part of Japan before and since there were some cheap flights we decided to go explore a new region together! Here we go!

Last week, we started our day-long journey through a very special Dutch town-inspired theme park called Huis Ten Bosch where there were pretty flowers everywhere!!

27 May 2017. Saturday.

So after looking around at all the beautiful flowers and the little kid Adventure Park, we found this bike rental place that had very unique bikes!

It actually wasn't too expensive to rent and try it out so we decided to go for it since the park was pretty big for us to walk around the entire place.

This was us on the bike! Since this is pretty much the only time we'll ever see a bike like this we just went for it and tried it out. I typically don't even ride bikes because I can't, so this was a rare chance for me to ride a bike without having to worry about balancing.

This was what the full bike looked like! I don't think I've ever seen a tandem bike that was side by side like this. And I've never seen another bike like this since that day.

The bike itself could actually go pretty fast since it has 4 wheels but if you went too quick you'd actually end up off balance a little bit, surprisingly. So we just took a nice leisurely ride. The only problem was we had to stop every time I wanted to take photos, like when we saw these poodles!

That big poodle was the biggest one I've ever seen! I think it's almost my shoulder length if it stood up on its hind legs!

Then we arrived at another pretty flower garden!

There were so many flower arches and many fairy lights too; I bet this place would look so pretty at night!

There was even a Ferris Wheel! Oh man I bet the view from up there would be so lovely at night with all the flowers and lights. It's practically the a proposal spot.

Everything was so pretty and flowery! I'm not really a fan of flowers as gifts, but when they're planted and groomed well like these it's quite a sight.

This entire place made me forget I was in Japan for a moment.

Especially with all these pine trees. This felt like it was supposed to be part of a palace or something.

The flower arches were so pretty! I was actually surprised there weren't any bugs buzzing around either and I thought they were fake for a bit but they are indeed real.

There were even a small rivers in between the flower paths and the pines! What a nice and tranquil place.

Man, what a view! And I'm not talking about the background 😉 okay just kidding. Maybe.

Going through the flower arches!

Until we end up in another place full of pretty flowers!

And at the mouth of this small canal was this heart-shaped light arch!

It was tough for me to see the camera since the sun was shining right in my face, but I bet this would be a great photo spot at night too.

There were flowers literally everywhere we looked! And they were all so colourful!

I think there was even a rose garden fair that was going on at the time. We didn't actually go in though, since it didn't look like there was anything we actually wanted to buy in there.

There was also this huge building right in the middle of the park. I think this was the tallest building in the whole Huis Ten Bosch and probably was at the very center as well.

I'm glad we came here in Spring, because who knows what this place would look like in Winter.

So many beautiful spots to take photos! I wonder if people actually did wedding shoots here. It's a little out of the way though.

There were even special areas of the garden dedicated to different ladies! For example, this place is called Redouté's Rose Folly.

The sign says that this area was dedicated to Empress Joséphine, the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, who used to paint portraits of roses she collected from all over the world. This led him to publish picture books of roses called "Les Roses", and here they've displayed their collection of roses from said book!

It's so cool that they actually went through that effort into sourcing which exact roses they were, or the descendants of those roses! I never thought of blending flowers and history together like this!

The flowers were even especially labelled to show which was which! Man that dedication.

There were some seating areas for people to relax and just soak in the beautiful atmosphere.

After walking around for a bit we heard some funky music coming from somewhere and we got to this Music Festival!

There was a whole crowd here standing, watching and dancing!

There were people in costumes dancing on the stage and there was a dude right at the front who was super into it! The music was so good though! Definitely my kinda music for sure.

Not too far from the music festival we saw yet another big poodle!