Bloom hydrangeas blooming in the Oga Peninsula
Oga-shi, Akita prefecture, known as the town of Namahage.
Many people visit every day, looking at the majestic view of the Oga Peninsula created by the unique landscape protruding in the Sea of Japan. In Oga Peninsula, there is a place that you definitely want to visit during the period from the middle of June to the beginning of July. It is a temple that is built in a painting that can overlook the Kitaura district’s northern end of the Oga Peninsula, Ununji Temple. Today, as “Hydrangea Temple”, about 30,000 people visited during the month from June to July, and it is a temple that is a representative tourist attraction of the Oga Peninsula.
Root of a just perfect Blue
The temple was called “Hydrangea Temple”, and it started with finding a cut flower of only one circle. Secondary priest of Unukuji temple, Muneko Kotono, found a hydrangea blooming small in the precincts and decorated the cut flower with a banana. Then, bright hydrangea flowers began to bloom quickly, Koaku-san was fascinated by the blue hydrangea. It was possible to plant hydrangeas of various colors, but I would like to plant a lot of this hydrated hydrangea that was fascinated in the precincts. With that kind of thought, only one hydrangea has now spread to the precincts as about 1,500 blue hydrangeas.
Raise with your own hand, choose “do not cut”
Originally, there are hydrangeas of various colors such as red hydrangea, purple hydrangea, yellow hydrangea etc. in hydrangea. The reason for becoming various colors is due to pigment called anthocyanin, which adds aluminum ions and supplementary dyes of the soil to infinitely change the color. The color of hydrangea is determined by soil, blue if soil is acidic, red if it is alkaline, and clean white if neutral. The soil decides the color of the flowers. It is the same as hydrangea talking to the soil and deciding the color to bloom from now,
As Kotaka also talks with hydrangea, it is commitment to prunify each by hand carefully one by one. It is difficult to care for 1500 shares of Hydrangea without using a machine, but Kosaka says, “I think that it hurts when the flowers are cut, I want to touch the flowers so that they can touch people.” Listen to the feelings of flowers rather than efficiency, carefully carefully growing blue hydrangeas. Such hydrangea’s feelings and raised and raised hydrangea blossom every year brilliantly, people are fascinated by its beauty.
青の絶景、ジャズが奏でる音色、雲昌寺
青い紫陽花を育ててきて、15年の月日が経つ。
古仲さんが育てた「青色」の紫陽花は、いまでは一面に広がっている。
空や境内から見える海のコントラストが紫陽花と調和し、青の絶景として雲昌寺に来る人たちを包んでくれる。
お寺の本堂から流れてくるのは、ジャズの音色。
その音色が目に映る紫陽花をモダンに、そして時にはリズミカルに、映し出している。
6月から7月と限られた期間だが、
だからこそ、副住職の古仲さんが大事に育てた紫陽花を、その時期に見て欲しい。
ひとつの青が、今では境内に広がる青として、人々を楽しませてくれる。
