Need a taste of spring before the cherry blossoms? Try this Osaka park with over 500,000 flowers

Spring is coming, and while cherry blossoms often hog the spotlight, there are lots of other flowers to look forward to as well. For example, rapeseed flowers are a beautiful bright yellow color and bloom in late winter and early spring, so they bring a little color to the land well before the cherry blossoms. There’s no better place to see them in than a park called Harvest Hill in Minami Ward, Sakai City, just south of Osaka, where you can find over 500,000 of the yellow blossoms.

As Osaka Prefecture’s biggest illumination event ended, Harvest Hill’s 3,000-square meter flower field in the Tsuki no Oka and Hoshi no Oka area became covered in hundreds of thousands of rapeseed blossoms like a giant yellow carpet. The sight of them swaying in the gentle wind under the bright blue sky will be sure to calm your spirit and inspire a love of nature.

You can even go into the flower field to enjoy a spring stroll among the tall yellow flowers, and it’s the perfect place for your next spring-themed Instagram post.

Harvest Hill also has eateries, and during rapeseed blossom season the Picnic Food Shop will be serving a sandwich featuring the pretty flower, which is also edible. In fact, though the flowers can also be eaten, rapeseed is also known as broccolini, which is harvested from the plant before it begins to flower.

The “Rapeseed Flower and Whitebait Sandwich Plate” (1,200 yen) contains a sandwich of whitebait, prosciutto, cream cheese, and of course, broccolini. It’s a colorful and undoubtedly delicious seasonal dish that will satisfy both the palate and the eye.

Of course, Harvest Hill has plenty of other attractions, including playgrounds, a petting zoo, workshops, and a rooftop theme park, so there are lots of things to do once you’ve had your fill of broccolini. They’re also holding Strawberry Harvest until May 30, in which you can take up to two hours to harvest and eat as many strawberries as you like.

Entry to the park is 1,200 yen for adults (junior high-school aged and up) and 800 yen for children over four (three and under are free), though participating in the Strawberry Harvest incurs an additional fee. The flowers are expected to be in bloom until the end of February, so don’t wait to see them before they’re gone!

And since you’ll be in the area, you might as well pop over to Osaka and try their best food souvenir…As well as their other gastronomic delights.