Spring has gone and Summer has come in Okinawa

The photo has been originally uploaded by Yuichi Momma's photostream in flickr

Sky, clouds, water and sandy beach, all of these were color of summer, and , sea breeze was so refreshing.

I stayed in Okinawa few days to enjoy the festival called Ryukyu KAIEN-SAI （琉球海炎祭） which was held in Ginowan city (宜野湾市） last Saturday.
It is a summer festival which is to be held earliest in Japan. And, the summer season of Okinawa is to be started by this festival. The most attractive event in the festival was fireworks.
I enjoyed that fireworks of 10,000 shots drew beautiful floral patterns in the night sky.

Icicles on the lakeside

Icicles on the lakeside, originally uploaded by photoholic image.

This is a scene of Lake Chyuzenji in winter.
The lake Chyuzenji spreads out at southern foot of Mount_Nantai (8,156 feet) which can be seen in the photo above.
This place is also one of the tourist spots in Nikko.
At the beginning of the Meiji period, summer villas were set up by Embassy of foreign countries like the UK, France, Italy and the US in this lakeside. Many foreign diplomats visited here to spend summer holiday on the lakeside. They introduced the trout fishing, yachting and boat racing to this place as same as they did in their home country.
It is said that they supervised the stocking of the lake with trout for their good catch of trout fishing, and they established first yacht club in Japan.

The hill where Baby Blue-Eyes bloom

The hill where Baby Blue-Eyes bloom, originally uploaded by photoholic image.

The image was taken on 25th April at the Hitachi Seaside National Government Park (国営ひたち海浜公園）.
The park has area of 350ha and one of the Japan's National Government Parks. The park area was the Air Force Base in Japanese army during the World War II.

This hill is called "Miharashi-no-oka" which means a hill with a fine view. When we stand on top of the hill, we can enjoy the panoramic view of 360 degrees including the Pacific ocean view. The whole hill is covered with baby blue-eyes in spring, and Kochia (burningbush) and cosmos will cover up the hill in autumn.

The image above has been optimized to look in the lightbox with full-screen.
Thank you for looking and wishing you all a wonderful Friday and weekend.