February is a season that everything started to revive from the cold winter.

35,000 plum trees in Soga Plum Grove of Odawara City start to blossom with a magnificent background view of the mountainous landscape of Hakone and Mt. Fuji.

The beautiful scenery of Mt. Fuji viewed from Soga Plum Grove was selected as one of Kanto Fuji View 100 Selections. The scenery is just amazing.

During the Plum Festival, there will be various funny events such as Yabusame, Odawara Lantern Dance, Lion Dance, pit spit game, etc. These events are very crowded.

The Yabusame is from the end of January to early March. I visited there on February 11th, when coincided with Japan traditional riding and shooting competitions, Yabusame. The tranquil plum grove became so bustling.

Yabusame is a traditional mounted archery, the rider run the horse on a straight line at a length of about 218 meters while shooting aiming at the targets on the left side in a continuous way. Yabusame, together with Kasakake and Inuoumono are called the Three Most-known Mounted Archeries in Japan.

Yabusame was originally considered a riding and shooting exercise in the old time. It gradually changed into a martial arts contest between Samurais.

Nowadays, Yabusame had become one of the traditional rituals in the Japanese shrine ceremony, you can see Yabusama at various place all around Japan. Yabusame is a ritual for praying for a good harvest and a peaceful world.

After leaving Soga Station, I followed the flow of the crowd and reached the venue. There was a barren field covered with many blue plastic sheets where people bring snacks and lunch boxes, finding a place to sit down, waiting for the Yabusame to start.

The afternoon sun is a bit strong and dazzling. The flow of people is getting bigger and bigger.

We sit on the grass and eat our lunch boxes happily.

Before the start of Yabusame, there is a long ritual ceremonies. We were at a place too far away from the stage. We could only hear the voice.

Finally I saw a procession approaching us.

People wears various transitional Japanese costumes.

The shooters are not only men but also women, there are four women out of the total ten members. There are three targets, the shooters have to ride a horse while shooting at the targets where the horse running at a high speed. The shooters have to complete various techniques such as tuck the arrow, open the bow, shotting, etc.

As the game progresses, it will switch to a different targets. Shooting at dishes is the most difficult technique to perform which is also the most exciting one for spectators to watch.

As the game moves to its climax, every one watching the game became ver exciting and started shouting involuntarily.

When the game entered into the second half, the weather became so hot that I almost lost my enthusiasm to watch the game for any longer.

After the game is finished, we followed other people left the place. We watched beautiful plum flowers.

The plums were mainly white plum flowers, there were little red plum flowers.

However I managed taken some good photos.

The Plum Blossom Festival also has it own mascot which is called Umemaru.

I had taken few photos of the children of my friend who are so cute!

Small dogie came to view the blossom with his master!

Information

* Please refer to the latest info before visiting the place.