Flower Festival at Showa Kinen Park, Tachikawa

Mish, YH and I went to the Flower Festival at Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa. The festival for 2016 runs from 17/03/16 to 22/05/16.

Website: http://www.showakinen-koen.jp/html/english/

The park is huge as can be seen from this map that was located right at the entrance of the park.

There were many people.....in the outer park and in the inner park.

To get the inner gardens, we have to pay a small fee of 410yen. Depending on the date, the park opens and closes at different times. Plus there's free entry on certain public holidays.

Immediately, the beautiful flowers near the ticketing gate captures my attention.

I really like this park. It makes a really great dating spot. There's beautiful flowers everywhere, ample space for a picnic and there are many areas for various activities such as boat rides, cycling and BBQ.

Sakura was still in full bloom then~

Off we go to the Spring garden.

Just look at the bright orange colour~ ain't it pretty?

Love how bright all the different flowers were~

Where there's beautiful flowers, you bet there'll be many people taking pictures.

We were there for the tulips which seemed to be in full bloom when we were there.

There were so many different varieties~

I love all the natural colour combinations~

If only, I have a beautiful garden like this one here.

Lol.....look at how focused we are at snapping pictures of the flowers

Couldn't help but wefie along the way as we enjoyed the flowers

Poppies with sakura in the background~

Spring is truly my favourite season. 

The flowers are all in full bloom~

Kinda resembles a new love blooming~

Hopefully next year, there will be a kareshi-san who's willing to revisit this park with me. Lol....

Poppies~

I really love the humongous sakura tree. Look at all the lovely couples underneath it!

I seriously need to get myself a mat next spring!

Nanohana~ aka rapeseed~

Seriously, wherever you look in this park, it's picture perfect!

hahaa....the scenery was too beautiful to not snap more pictures with it~

Searching for my future~

Enjoying spring while it lasts~

<3

Onyasai, Tachikawa

Went for tabehoudai shabu-shabu at Onyasai. It costs 2980yen, which is a pretty good deal considering we get to choose from 6 different types of beef and pork.

There's a buffet drink selection too but we didn't get that as we figured that we couldn't drink that much. We each ordered a drink instead. This is my grapefruit juice for 280yen.

Our soup base - a yuzu salt broth and a spicy broth.

Interesting bowl to hold the meat so that the excess liquid can drip off before you dip it into your sauce to prevent the liquid from diluting your sauce.

Our first serving~ a platter of various vegetables and mushrooms, minced chicken and pork.

This is the beef

In the first round itself, we dumped everything that you see here into our pot! Lol....

quail eggs

A second order of mushrooms and veg

More pork~ <3

Ground sesame seeds! This went really well with the sesame sauce.

Interesting "italian kinoko sandwich"dish of cheese layered between 2 very thinly sliced kinoko mushrooms. To be boiled for 10 seconds in the hot pot to just melt the cheese~ Very interesting!

More minced chicken of various flavour. I think I enjoyed the green pesto one the most!

Many more rounds of veg, mushrooms and meat later, we got our desserts. One dessert per person!

I got the onyasai ice which is vanilla ice cream with black sugar syrup and kinako powder.

Super good~

Green tea sorbet

Monaka ice~

Overall, I really enjoyed the food here, especially the pork slices <3 Would definitely love to go back~!!!!