May 4, 2009

Hirosaki Cherry Blossom Festival

I've been trying to write about our day trip to Hirosaki for a few days now, but when you have approximately 20,326,483 pictures of an event, it's a little daunting to blog about it.  

Enter; my mad video making skillz.  Yeah.  That's right.  I'm so awesome at making videos on my Mac, (which makes it insanely easy) that I spell "skills" with a Z! 

As usual, I've tried to choose rocking music to accompany my movie to make it worth your additional click. 

So enjoy.

(That's an order.)



This movie is dedicated to our good friends "The Effs" who plan awesome trips and then let us tag along!!!

Want more technical information?  Rather than tell you in my own words all about Hirosaki Castle and the surrounding area, I'm going to copy and paste from japan-guide.com.

Here you go:

"Hirosaki Castle was built in 1611 by the Tsugaru Clan. A three-story castle tower, fortified moats, castle gates and some corner turrets (yagura) survive or were reconstructed. The castle is located in Hirosaki Park, a spacious public park of about 0.6 square kilometers.  The castle's original five-story keep burnt down in 1627 after being struck by lightning. Rebuilt in 1810, the present three-story keep is the only one in the Tohoku region that was not rebuilt in the modern era, amongst only a handful in all of Japan.

Gokoku Shrine
Botanical Garden

Hirosaki Park is one of Japan's most famous cherry blossom spots with several thousand cherry trees. Over a million people visit the park during the sakura matsuri(cherry blossom festival) from April 23 to May 5, when the blossoms are usually in bloom. This coincides with the Golden Week holidays.

Inside Hirosaki Park there are a few other attractions of interest, including the Hirosaki Castle Botanical Garden in the park's southeast corner and Gokoku Shrine, the Aomori branch of Yasukuni Shrine in the north end of of the park. Most of the city's other tourist attractions are also located within walking distance of the park."

8 comments:

Allison said...

Your video is so cute! You have mad skillz! LOL

Melonie said...

Gorrrrgeous!!!

BTW my package arrived today - the earrings are beautiful. And they were wrapped up so pretty. I seriously made sure to take pictures of every step of the unwrapping process so I can blog it properly this week. :-)

Beeswax said...

You are right, the z takes your skills up another level. I dug the music. Sometime, for another video, you should use Big in Japan by Alphaville.

PS Why don't we have trees like that in Arizona? Is not fair.

The Valentine Fam said...

Your talent continues to amaze me!!

You'll be happy to know I did a whole post about you... maybe the traffic will start flowin again! :)

Kelley Bochman Smith said...

LOVED the video, you made me feel like I was actually there. Yeah! You gave me a micro mini vacation today! thank you!

No Buckaroos said...

Hello - my apologies for my absenteeism for a while - (Google Reader's fault!) I'm back - and will enjoy your adventures once again! (Katie's mom)

Melissa Abby said...

Awesome video! I need some lessons. I is so pretty there! I guess all the rain and snow are what makes it so pretty like Rhode Island is right now...I still prefer year round sun!

The Brough Family said...

Hi!
I'm Liz Brough and we're getting ready to move to Misawa this July. My friend Karen Judd is really good friends with your sister in-law Lisa, and shee gave me your blog address. I've enjoyed reading some of your posts and loved the videos of your adventures in Japan. I had to laugh at your wishing for girls. I have three girls and no boys and feel the same way about wanting to buy little boy things (you know legos, swords, cars - all the good stuff :)). Anyway, thanks for letting me snoop. Hope to meet you when we get to Misawa in July. (We also know the Alley's from our ward in Philadelphia... it's a small world!)