This day we were in transit to Hiraizumi. It was recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site and we happened to visit the temple, Motsu-ji, during the Iris Festival. Our timing couldn't have been better! There are something like 170 varieties of irises that were donated by the famous iris garden at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo (which we were also lucky enough to visit a couple of days earlier). My favorites were there purpley-blue ones, but it was the speckling of all the other varieties behind it that made me choose this photo as the favorite among many.
