Did you know that the Hydrangea plant ("Ajisai" in Japanese) is native to Japan and China?  Since moving back to Japan this last year, I started noticing that many houses around our neighborhood had them growing in their yards, as well as in my own.  The flowers started blooming in our area in late May and are still going strong.  I also see them dotting the tollways when I drive through the mountains, as they seem to be growing wild in random places.

日本は梅雨ですねぇ。でも私の住んでいる地域は例年に比べて雨がとても少ないように思います。みなさんの地域ではどうですか？　東京や九州ではかなり降っているところもあるようですね。このころになると、紫陽花（あじさい）の花があちらこちらで咲いてかたつむりなんかもでてきますよね。　

この紫陽花って日本が原産国らしいですが、知ってましたか？
 
It is very popular in Japan to put the flowers in a vase and display them in your house.  One example of how popular they are here is when I casually mentioned to one of my neighbors that I had just cut some of the flowers to put in a vase.  She then got excited and started pulling buckets out of her house filled with her own hydrangea to show me a couple of varieties that she had.
 
この写真のように花瓶に花をかざるのは日本特有なようですね。
 
 
日本人にとっては、この6月あたりに色々なところで咲く紫陽花ですが、外国の方にとっては珍しい花で、見たこともない人もたくさんいるようです。

日本の四季、それぞれの季節で趣のある風景がいろんなところで見られる日本って素晴らしいと再認識しました。その素晴らしさを海外から来る人たちにも経験してもらいたいですね。
 
There are a supposedly thousands of varieties of hydragea with one even being named "Kyushu", which is the island of Japan where I live.  The type growing in my yard have the mophead shape and currently have a purple color. The ones I picked are shown in the vase above.  My in-laws have what is called a lacecap variety and have white flowers.  These are shown in the pictures below.  The lacecap kind have smaller flowers in the middle surrounded by larger flowers around the outside.