It is one of my favorite jobs! I don't work on the actual historical documents, just the little curator's blurbs about them, but as far as I can gather, the people up north in, like, Akita and Aomori tended (and still tend) to grow more chrysanthemums for eating rather than looking at? Have some nice chrysanthemum blossoms on your salad, chrysanthemum petal fritters, etc. (Seriously.) Also the word "chrysanthemum" is a pain in the ass to type a lot, especially when Japanese gets by with just 菊。

and yeah, I kind of squeaked in the electrical store and stood there gazing earnestly at the TV, the poor store clerk must have been very confused.