Hello everybody, how are you?
We will have summer holidays called “Obon” soon.
Actually, “Obon” is not just holidays, it is a special time for family in Japan.
I guess any culture has something like this (for example, “day of the death” in Mexico or Halloween in America), at “Obon” in Japan, the spirit of our ancestors is coming home.
We clean and decorate around the family cemetery.
And people who have Buddhist altar home, they decorate it also and put the pretty lights on.
All these custom is for welcoming the ancestor’s sprit also letting them know where their home is.
The way how to decorate is a little different in each area. People had been tried to use the local things as they could do something even they were poor.
In Aso area, people had used the wild flowers blooming in the grassland.
Nowadays, less farmers use the real wild flowers in the grassland as they use the flower which they grow in their own garden instead.
It is illegal to pick up the plants at the grassland inside National park (we are in Aso Kuju national park) in general, but as for the local farmers want the flower for this “Obon” decoration, they are allowed to pick up the wild flowers in the Aso grassland.
It is very nice that this beautiful tradition in Aso had been inherited.
The pictures of whild flowers are all I took last week at Daikanbo. Diakanbo is a popular lookout to see the group of central volcanic cones and northern part of caldera at the same time. And also you will be able to see the vast grassland spreading on the pyroclastic plateau, outside of caldera.
There are a couple trails you can walk through the grassland, so please enjoy these cute wildflowers if you come to Aso in summer!
Kana
