I happened to see a newspaper reporting that the Olympic Rings was set up at Narita Airport the other day. And I went to see it yesterday.
As usual I took the escalators to go up to the first floor of terminal 1.
Then I went out of terminal 1 and walked across the crossing, yes, I found it standing against the bamboo trees. And it surely makes us feel that the Olympic and Paralympic games will be held here in Japan within a month.
On the opposite side to the Olympic Rings, you 'll see a Japanese style garden with a waterwheel and a pond in which 'Ohga Hasu, lotus and other kind of lotus flowers are now at their best. You'll come to view flowers in the morning because they wither around noon.
This garden was opened on June 22, 2015 as a symbol of welcome to visitors.
Let me tell you more about 'Ohga Hasu':
Under the government policy during and after World War 2, some workers had been digging the peat(泥炭) layers at Kemigawa Farm Garden (now Kemigawa Athletes Garden) in Chiba, in the aim of using it as fuel. Surprisingly a dugout canoe (丸木舟) and six oars(櫂) came out of the peat layers.
Consequently, some scholars started the joint excavations, in which two more dugout canoes and fragments of lotus flowers were found. They recognized this area was a complex of dugout canoes.
On hearing this, Dr. Ichiro Ohga(1883～1965), a botany professor of Tokyo University, began to excavate there with the help of the local high school students, pupils, and citizens on March 3, 1951.
It had seemed to be a fruitless effort until a senior high school girl student finally found a lotus seed in the early afternoon on the 30th, just on the eve that they were supposed to finish the excavations. Therefore they extended excavations by several days and they found two more lotus seeds, which were brought to Dr. Ohga to nurture all three seeds. He was successful in nurturing only one. Now Ohga Hasu has been transplanted to many places.
The fragments of the dugout canoe were sent to Dr. willard Frank Libby in Chicago University. And the radiocarbon dating indicated that the dugout canoe was used 3000 years ago and the lotus seed might be from more than 2000 years ago.
Isn't it fantastic to see lotus flowers that the people might have seen 2000 years ago?
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