Red spider lilies (higanbana), Kaizu City, Gifu Prefecture (September 2021)
On our way to Yoro Falls, we stopped to see the red spider lilies in Kaizu. Every September, around the autumn equinox, these bright red flowers bloom along riverbanks and rice field edges all over Japan.
We were a little late. The flowers had been at their best about a week earlier, but the riverbank was still covered in red.
Wild birds live here too. Ducks were swimming quietly in the stream.
A week earlier, the vivid red would have spread even further along the bank.
Hariyo: A Rare Fish in Spring Water
A small fish called the hariyo (a kind of stickleback) lives here, and it is protected as a natural monument of the city. It can only survive in cold, clean spring water.
The clear pond is fed by spring water, and you can see the little fish swimming among the water plants.
Natural spring water bubbles up from the ground here.
