Today is Sunflower Day in Japan (Himawari no hi, ひまわりの日). This day has been celebrated since JAXA launched their first meteorological satellite on July 14th 1977. The name of that satellite was “Sunflower number 1”. Since then, during the last 40 years, Japan has launched eight “Sunflower” meteorological satellites to space. The one that is used today to predict the impact of typhoons (like the one that is approaching us this week) is Sunflower number 8.
People usually forget about the origin of the celebration, the important of this day is to have a nice day by being creative using sunflowers. These are some of the images of the day on Twitter:
Sunflower number 8 launch at the end of last year