Ride the Habatan train to Sayo-Nanko Sunflower festival (佐用町南光ひまわり祭り)

(tags はばタン, train, picture, nature, Hyogo)

My local train fanatic suggested killing two birds with one stone: visit the Sayo-Nanko Sunflower Festival (佐用町南光ひまわり祭り) by riding the Habatan wrapping train. I don't have the camera skills to shoot a picture like this, but it's only a day trip away so let's go!

Here's the Habatan-themed wrapping train. Habatan (はばタン) is now Hyogo Prefecture's mascot, but it was originally from the remembrance (2004) of the Great Hanshin earthquake. I remember it gaining attention from the Nojigiku National Sports Festival in Hyogo 2006. This train itself has been in service on and off since 2006, and has been covered photographically in detail. Rail.ac and Kobe Travel Wallpaper Collection (神戸観光壁紙写真集) both have better pictures.

The train travels from Japan Rail Himeji (姫路) to Sayo (佐用) stations. It's a rural route and sometimes there's only one railway line between stations. We were waiting for the approaching train to pass, but the falling rain was slowing its progress. I snapped this zoomed picture from inside. I'm not the girl snapping a picture under an umbrella.

After a 30 minute delay, we finally arrived at Harima-Tokusa station (播磨徳久). This was actually my first chance to take pictures of the right side of the train. Unfortunately I was dumb by forcing the train conductor to change my 1000 yen bill, thus delaying my snapping opportunities.

Take off!

For the day's event, they anticipated a crowd by adding one more car to the service. But unfortunately the rain forcast probably discouraged some people, because the train was half empty. There was a free shuttle bus to go to the festival grounds. I was surprised but then again, rural roads don't have much space for pedestrians, as I learned from walking back to the station.

Ah, nothing says official like a banner. After entering the gate and paying 100 yen, we were treated to dancing sunflowers. One field was dedicated to sunflowers from around the world with all sorts of colors from blue to orange. According to the web page, there was total of 1.5 million sunflowers at 7 sites covering a total of 30 hectares. I only visited one site since the other site's have their flower mature at differing times. Sunflowers only bloom for 3 days so this was my lucky day.

The rest of the fields at this site could accommodate hundreds of people but the rain forecast and muddy grounds kept the people from frolicking. They even had a special field dedicated for the Sunflower Maze. Crazy. If I had boots I would have love to get lost. Anyways, out of all my pictures, this is the only one that is 100 percent nature.

The fields are separated by half-meter tall walkways. I stepped into the sludge to get up-close and personal. The spiral design is governed by the Fibonacci numbers and golden angle, which supposedly maximizes the packing of seeds in a given area. Oh yeah, I just like them spirals.

After trying out the free samples of somen, eating sunflower seed ice cream and buying sunflower seed salad dressing, I attempted to walk back to the station.

The train only arrives every hour, so we had to wait. The Harima-Tokusa station has a nice rustic waiting room with a bunch of nature advertisements. But my aim was to take pictures of Habatan. Ahhh.

The ride back to Himeji was of course in the Habatan train but I was too tired so my pictures didn't come out. Next time, I'm gonna take some sun lotion because my face was baked and peeling for a couple of days. Heh.