The Tokyo Cosmos Festival is held every September to November in Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa. Like sakura season, the flowers don't necessarily follow the blooming schedule so you can be lucky or unlucky no matter when you go. Depending on what part of Tokyo you travel from, it can be a 30+ minute train ride to Tachikawa so it's better to check the latest photos on Twitter or Facebook before you you go. I'm speaking from experience because when we went in late October, most of the famous pink cosmos were already gone!

The park has a 410 yen entrance fee but it covers a huge area and has beautiful gardens all year round. It also has barbecue facilities and rental bicycles, rowboats and croquet equipment so there's more than enough entertainment to last a whole day. I recommend you buy one of these cute doughnuts outside, just to keep your energy up. Looking at flowers can be very taxing indeed...! 

Here comes the sad part. We saw a lot of lovely yellow cosmos but the fields of pink cosmos are the big draw. The little sign above shows what it's supposed to look like. However all we got was...

This.

Oh well, maybe next year. We didn't regret going because it's one of the better parks in the Tokyo area and it's nice to discover places to take long walks. There were a lot of families with young children enjoying the playgrounds and there are snack stands scattered around the park if you need refreshment.

The Showa Kinen park website has a flower blooming schedule on it but, as we learned, it isn't that reliable. The nice point about going near the end of the season is that people were allowed to pick flowers and take them home. I don't know if that's allowed all through the festival period but it doesn't seem likely. Anyway I would feel guilty about ruining the view for others! Fresh flowers are very expensive in Tokyo so this is a good way to brighten up your home, as long as you don't mind only getting yellow cosmos!