The blooms of Yamagata await travellers looking to taste and soak up the region!

If you love cheerries take note! Yamagata offers cherry orchards all around and try your hand at cherry picking at Cherry Land which has 300 cheery orchards for tourists - the most cherry orchards in Japan. Make sure you make bookings ahead of the trip and then take your pick of what's in season. Currently the Satonisiski cherry is in season and a favourite for its sweetness. Fruit picking which can be enjoyed till mid-July offers all you can eat for 60 minutes for only 1700 yen (S$ 28) and tips on picking - based on size and colour and also method, which is by the tip, to avoid bruising the fruit. Fruit higher on the tree and a rich red colour means the cherry is sweet. After the sweet experience, head to an inn with a famous hot spring for a night's stay. Again early bookings are helpful if you want to relish the stay at the famous luxury hot spring with flowers.

The rose package offers a spacious Japanese-Western style guest room and dinner. For 1500 yen (S$ 25) you can also indulge in the rose bath which is great for a girls' trip. Each person gets a basket of 50 roses purchased directly from the local farmers. Sagae is one of Japan's most prominent rose-growing area. The scent of roses is quite strong especially during the hot spring bath with roses of Sagae. Smelling of roses it's time to dine on rose food. The famous Rose French dinner is served at the restaurant of the inn starting with hors d'oeuvres of smoked salmon that is shaped into a rose served with caviar,followed by a fish dish with special sauce made of rose essence and wine and the main dish, a juicy steak of Yamagata beef with sauce made of rose jam that enhances the taste of Yamagata beef. Dessert is Panna Cotta with rose petal and rose jam.

The Flower tour in Yamagata ends at Sagae and with some train and bus connections continues at Kahoku town, a place of safflower. The safflower is a representative flower of Yamagata and so you'll find the safflower resource centre in Kahoku town housed in a building that was once owned by a rich safflower farmer in the Edo era. It's now used to preserve and display the resources of the local history and culture. July is ideal for a visit as it's safflower season and the blossoms will cover Kahoku town. Safflower festivals will also be held in many districts. As the Safflower is used for dyes and was worth100 times that of rice in Edo era, the trip is a chance to view exquisite dyed kimonos. Take a trip to Beninoyakata for this and try your hand at dyeing with some experts which requires booking in advance. The yellow safflower flowers which are left to dry a few days become red and are made into safflower cakes (Beni Mochi) along with traditional dyeing ingredients. These soaked in water will be used for the dyeing process with yellow and red pigments coming from the petals. An added bonus to using the flowers for dyeing is the floral scent left in this case, on the white handkerchief used for a tie-dye souvenier. Head out of Kahoku town by Okuu line to Tendo city known as a safflower-growing area. Here you can soak up a safflower bath. Hot spring inn, Ichiraku offers the very popular safflower bath. It's especially popular with women as it's good for the skin and also offer herbal medicinal properties for women's diseases. If you get cold hands and feet, or suffer a terrible stiff neck this is good for you then. The colour of the bath is beautifully yellowed from a bag of ingredients for the safflower bath which is mainly dried safflower, called Ranka. The yellow pigment of safflower which dissolves in water also contains anti-oxidants. And if you want more safflower, then think food with a set menu that comes with the bath. This includes Safflower noodle which is offered only in summer.

Next it's Wakayama for spa, food and mountains with a hard to forget taste memory - - salted plum (Nanko Ume). Minabe is a district famous for producing Nanko Ume. In fact you might stumble on a sign that says "Kishu Minabe's salted plum" the birth place of Nako Ume, using plums with fat flesh. Visitn during the harvest season and you'll be picking plums organizedby Japan Agricultural Co. It lasts 40 minutes and during that time you'll learn how to spot those right of salting and to pluck them off the trees for pickling at a local factory. The process involves sun-drying the plums which are already very salty and get fully ripened by the sun. Other than a factory visit, you can enjoy plum cooked food such as grilled plum chicken which uses chicken was fed with food containing plum vinegar and marinated with plum vinegar for a delicious dish served with plum and Konbu seaweed rice. There's also salted plum rice too enhanced by Ohba herb and dried small fish.

From Minabe travel to Shirahama for a traditional plum bath. The beach of Shirahama is white and sandy making it a famous sightseeing spot. Next too far from it is Hamachidori no Yu Kaishu, an inn facing the Pacific Ocean. All the corridors of the inn are made of tatami mat and all rooms with room for a spacious double size bed have a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. Salt will surround you but not from the sea. Rather there's plum salt - the same salt that's added to plum vinegar from making salted plums. Instead of becoming pickled you'll find your skin soft and smooth using the salt which is followed by a unique bath - in a real plum barrel that is 100 years old. Nanko plum seeds are used for stone paving around the barrel bath that is a good size for one person. Meals at the hotel feature Nanko plums of course! There's Kishu's Nanko salted plum that's been de-salted and cooked in syrup, Nanko plum stewed in white wine, boiled pike eels (Hamo) in a sauce made of sesame and salted plums. In the morning take a bus to find another unique bath and on the way visit the Seafood Souvenir Centre where you can see workers splitting up tuna for fresh fillets to take home and the backbone flesh offered free for a tasty treat. There's a variety of dried fish that are locally caught, including dried tuna, a Kishu's speciality that you can take home.The bus will wind into the mountains for Kishu's other speciality, Binchotan charcoal, a brand name for the best charcoal in Japan. You can observe the process if you don't mind the dust and heat from the kiln for baking the charcoal made of local hard oak just as it was done since the Edo era. Next to soak up the Binchotan bath at a resort hotel by the sea. The Kishu Minabe Royal Hotel has an open-air charcoal bath which is really black thanks to Minabe's speciality, Binchotan powder in a bag. The day-use of the bath comes with Binchotan charcoal lunch which is not charcoal but a claypot of rice with charcoal dusted sea bream.

From Hakata to Takeo Spa by Sasebo line and a transfer to a bus to visit unique baths in Saga in Kyushu which is best enjoyed in summer. First is the Ureshino (happy) Spa in Saga prefecture a spa town with 40 hot spring inns due to a good quality hot spring. Sited on Beautiful Bare Skin Street is Ureshino spa and round the corner from that street is Seybold's foot spa an Edo era doctor famous in Nagasaki for extolling the Uresniho Spa. Take a walk along Ureshino River and be wonderfully rewarded by the Todoroki Falls so named as it sounds like a rumble of thunder.

It's 11 meters high and is a magnificent waterfall with 3 tiers. If food calls you'll want one of Ureshino's specialities - tofu hot pot as Ureshino is a soybean-producing area with silky and creamy soy milk. Itamae Azumaya is an old-established store famous for its tofu hot pot with soup so white you can't see the tofu which is hard tofu made in Ureshino. The tofu strangely starts melting in the pot of boiling spring water because of the sodium it contains. Finally stop at Arita porcelain ware where there's an open-air Arita ware family bath. The price for a pot is 1 million yen (S$ 16330) but for a fraction of that price you can have a soy milk bath in Arita ware or a bath without soy milk. Something you must not to forget is Ureshino tea. The new tea season is the best time to visit for freshly picked green teas. Try a cup of Tama green tea which is Ureshino's speciality from a 150 year old shop. You can also take a bus to the tea plantation known as he Iwayagawa area is called Tea Road. The area is the most suitable area for growing tea in Ureshino and you can try tea picking before going to the inn for the night with a pick-up limo service from anywhere in the city if you book in advance.

The inn of tea spirits or Warakuen an old-established inn at Ureshino Saga. From tea incense to a tea bath known as the Ureshino Tea bath that is open air amid a huge garden.It's a luxury to use the drinkable tea for the bath which includes Urushino tea bags for free to use for massages. Dinner is served in the guest room and features a Kaiseki course with tea leaves. Guests get to grind the tea by themselves immediately before eating which can be sprinkled over sashimi. Tea is also used for the soup stock in the main dish of Saga beef hot pot dinner that caps a trip to bask in nature.