Festival report: Hitsujiyama Park's Shibazakura Festival

The Shibazakura Festival in Hitsujiyama Park is one of Saitama's best known spring festivals and the flowers themselves are an iconic spring image of the prefecture. I visit this festival once every three to four years. My last visit was this year, April 2026. The festival is on until the end of Golden Week, May 6th - all things equal. ⇗Event information in English.

Shibazakura in English is Moss Phlox, but I use the Japanese in this post because even international tourists tend to know the festival as the "Shibazakura Festival" rather than the "Moss Phlox Festival". Same for the other famous one: the Mt Fuji Shibazakura Festival. Each year thousands upon thousands of people descend upon both of these Shibazakura Festival. I try to avoid the crowds, so this year I visited the one in Hitsujiyama on April 5th.

I was very lucky that not only were the shibazakura already blooming beautifully, but the cherry blossoms were still in bloom too. Word had not yet got around that the shibazakura were blooming earlier than normal, so the park wasn't as manic as normal, but there were still throngs of people. However, queue time wasn't bad. The worst part was queuing for the parking lot, which took about 20 minutes. At its peak, people queue for hours for the parking lot, so I can't complain.

In the food area, known as the Chichibu Marche, we didn't have to wait long to get served, but we had to wait about 10 minutes to get a table and chairs. Again, at its peak, you could be waiting an hour to get food and there is little chance of getting a table and chairs. I really enjoyed our visit this year thanks to the shorter wait times than usual.

I was so happy I finally got to see the shibazakura and cherry blossoms bloom at the same time. The cherry blossoms have long since turned green, but the shibazakura are in full bloom, peak condition since April 16th. They are holding their bloom well even this week, but the organizers are concerned they won't last until the end of Golden Week. So, if you want to see them, you're best to get there this weekend if you can.