Sakura

I first visited Japan in 2017 and fell in love. Since the day I returned from that trip, I've been telling people my three favorite places on this planet to visit are Paris, Japan and sub-Saharan Africa (it's really four with New York City, but who's quibbling...). Yet as of the end of 2023, I had not returned for a second visit to Japan. Too many places to go, I guess. There are so many places on the list. Heck, I haven't even been to Paris since 2016, which seems like some sort of crime.

Then last year on the way back from Lunar New Year celebration in Singapore, we had a layover for about 18 hours in Tokyo and all the love that I felt for the place came rushing back. Why had we not been here in seven years? What the heck was wrong with us? We had to remedy that and like now.

So as soon as we returned home, we planned our next Japan visit. We debated a bit about when to go but ultimately we picked cherry blossom season. I mean, why not? Why not go to Japan during one of the most spectacular times of the year? Let's not mess around with off-season or shoulder season or any other sort of non-high season. Let's go during one of the most popular celebrations on the calendar. We live right next to Washington, DC which has its own collection of (Japan-donated) cherry blossom trees which draw visitors from all over the United States and beyond. This time of year has to be better in Japan, right? Right?

The lobby of the Grand Hyatt. Ready for sakura season.

The question is, of course, how do you make an advance reservation to go see something that is weather and/or climate dependent. Peak bloom of the sakura (I'm ditching the cherry blossom term for the majority of this post going forward) does not happen at the same time each year. Sometimes it's in late March, sometimes it's in early April. On rare occasions it might be a little earlier or a little later than those times. Sure we could use last year's peak as a guide, but ultimately, there are no guarantees with this sort of stuff.

But ain't that really the case with most things in life? There are very, very few guarantees out there.

Now, we could have decided to go to Tokyo for a few weeks and just make sure we had the entire possible season covered but like I said earlier...we got tons of places to go. One week. That was it here. So, what did we do? We guessed and hoped for the best. We decided last March that our week in Tokyo this year would cover from March 31 to April 5 with our arrival and departure the day before and after those dates respectively. If we were wrong, well...maybe we'd miss out on the whole thing.

The 70 year old weeping cherry blossom tree at Rikugien Garden. Maybe a week past its prime.

That wasn't really how it was likely going to pan out. The odds on missing the whole thing were really astronomically small.

One good thing about sakura season in Tokyo (or anywhere else on Earth, really...) is that the peak bloom doesn't last one day. It's not like there is one particular day that all the various species of cherry blossoms flower spectacularly and then shed all their petals the very next day. We could probably afford to miss peak day by a few days and still get something that would be amazing.

There also are actually many, many species of sakura in Tokyo and they all flower at slightly different times. There is a sakura forecast that is issued a dozen or so times before late March each year that predicts the peak date for blooms in various parts of the country. But this forecast is based on a particular type of sakura (the somei yoshino) and doesn't match up to the petals opening on all other similar but different species. The point here is that we'd probably be OK if we missed the peak day. There would be something, somewhere for us to see. 

I am telling you, though...we sat and waited for those forecasts to come out. January, February. March. Checking every couple of days pretty much for a while in February and early March. 

They seemed to be working out for us. The first, second, third and fourth sakura forecasts for the country of Japan put peak sakura day within the dates we had picked for our trip. Whew! What a relief!! Eventually, peak day seemed to settle down somewhat on April 1, which was day three of our seven full days in country. Sometimes you guess and you guess right. It sure looked like we did with this one. Bring on the sakura!!!

The Grand Hyatt provides guests with sakura maps (top); sakura at Gotokuji Temple (bottom). 

Of course, it didn't work out that perfectly, but we'll get to that.

One thing to know about sakura season in Tokyo is that there are sakura everywhere. And I do mean like everywhere. Sure, there are famous and favorite large concentrations of these trees in major park spaces in Tokyo, but they also line the side of streets; grow in cemeteries; are found on the properties of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines; fill the gardens of museums; and are just there pretty much anywhere else you can find small to medium-sized trees growing. Sometimes when you look at a city like Tokyo big picture, all you see is concrete and glass (and a lot of the concrete in Tokyo seems to be an attractive shade of beige or gray...). But look beyond that and you will start to see plant life everywhere, including sakura. These trees really are all over the place in that city.

They are also all over the place in other ways. Maybe not the whole trees. Sometimes just the flowers. We found sakura representations or decorations on manhole covers all over town and in fabric patterns on at least one of the Tokyo Metro lines. We also found their shapes on cookies and in bags of rice crackers and potentially used as flavorings in cakes. After a week in Tokyo this spring, I have no idea what sakura taste like despite eating a piece of sakura flavored chiffon cake and some sakura-shaped (but not necessarily sakura-flavored) rice crackers. I assume this food stuff fades away outside of blossom season. We didn't notice any of this when we visited Japan in 2017, but we also weren't really looking for them either.

Sakura in manhole cover, subway seat fabric and rice cracker form, various Tokyo locations.

Having said all that, our sakura watching started on day one of our trip. Not full day one. Before that, in the few hours we stayed awake after landing at Haneda Airport and checking into our hotel. 

There is a sakura-zaka (what I interpret to mean a street lined with cherry blossom trees) about a block from our hotel. First impression? Not great. They didn't seem very pink and they didn't seem like they were in full bloom. But then again, it was after sunset and it was three days before the alleged peak. We had time.

We were looking for two things sakura-wise out of our trip to Tokyo. The first was some amazing, fantastic vista of sakura. I mean, that's why we decided to fly 14 hours direct to Japan for a week. We wanted dense, overwhelming, next-level cherry blossoms all around us. Gorgeous, incredible, light pink, petals-falling-in-the-gentle-breeze stuff. We researched all the top places to find sakura in the city and had many, many of them on our list. Yoyogi Park. Ueno Park. Shinjuku Gyoen. Sumida Park. Meguro River. And tons more. We wanted exactly what we came to see everywhere, but we expected it at least somewhere.

The second thing we were looking for were the famous hanami celebrations, which as we understood it prior to landing in Tokyo in late March consisted of Japanese families and friends sitting under the sakura on blankets or blue tarpaulins in public places consuming food and maybe questionable quantities of sake and birhu (I will forever refer to beer this way when talking about that ambrosia in Japan). In my mind's eye, I pictured this as a cacophony of celebration and lust for life at this time of year.

Aoyama Cemetery. A great start to our sakura-viewing.

The weather didn't cooperate. Our first day in Tokyo was a gorgeous spring day but we found the sakura to be generally the same as our first night in the city, meaning not super pink and not in full bloom. Aoyama Cemetery was an incredible introduction to our Tokyo sakura experience; we got a taste of how spectacular things could be and we saw multiple types of sakura (we think). But then it turned rainy. 

And then it turned cold and rainy. 

And then it continued to be cold and rainy.

The cold and the rain did two things for us or to us. First, I believe the weather pushed the peak bloom day into the future. I have absolutely no scientific evidence for this but the blossoms seemed no fuller on April 1 (the supposed peak day) than they did on March 30 and they DID seem more noticeable the next weekend. That gave us fewer days to appreciate peak bloom.

Second, it made us rearrange our schedule to do all the indoors things we intended to do on the rainy days and push all the sakura viewing to the last two and a half days of our trip. But it was really just one day and few hours because we had an appointment on the Saturday (one of the sunny days) that we couldn't re-schedule. This made Friday our key sakura day. A whole day outside in the sun. We made this into an "all eggs in one basket day" and not by choice. We saved what we thought might be the best spots for this one day, knowing that we'd have a couple of hours in the morning on Sunday if we really needed it.

Sakura at night along the Meguro River. They look super pink because the lighting is pink.

So don't get me wrong here. We still saw plenty of sakura during the rain and the cold days. After Aoyama Cemetery, we saw encouraging signs at Gotokuji Temple, Yoyogi Park, Ueno Park, along the Meguro River, in Kawagoe and in the gardens of the Tokyo National Museum. We just weren't overwhelmed with pink flowers in a way that we wanted to be. We didn't find any place where it was like this is worth traveling halfway around the world to experience.

One of the things we did discover in those first few days is how spectacularly impressive some of the trunks on the older trees are. There's a picture above of some sakura at Aoyama Cemetery. The trees on both sides of the photo are of similar height overall but the trunks of the trees are notably completely different. I'm assuming the species are the same (they looked exactly the same in person) which suggests to me that the trees' maximum height is achieved rather early in the lifecycle of the sakura. After that the trees trunks fatten up and ultimately become twisted and gnarled in the most excellent way, even causing some trees to become unbalanced and requiring manmade supports to stay upright. Cool stuff.

Then it was Friday. Eggs. Basket. Just one basket. Here we go.

Sakura under gray skies along the Oyoko River (top); rain splattered pond at the Tokyo National Museum (bottom).

We started Friday with a visit to Rikugien Gardens, a 300 plus year old established way back in 1695 under sponsorship or at least permission from the fifth Tokugawa shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. It's what I would call a sort of classic Japanese landscaped garden, with ponds and bridges and a tea house or two. The gardens are home to a 70-year old weeping cherry blossom tree as well as some other sakura.

The place is spectacularly gorgeous. But not what we wanted. There were barely any blooming sakura and the weeping cherry blossom was clearly way past its prime based on the petals on the ground all beneath its branches. Beautiful, but not what we came to see.

We moved on to Ueno Park, which we had visited during the wettest, coldest day earlier in the week to spend a couple of hours at the Tokyo National Museum. It was so wet that day that we bought umbrellas in the Museum gift store, which is never really a purchase you want to make on vacation. On the way to the Museum, we saw enough light pink in the south half of the property that we thought it was worth a second trip.

There are a lot of sakura at Ueno Park. There are also a lot of people in Ueno Park. The main spine of the park is flanked by a series of sakura on either side under which a flood of sightseers were walking, gawking and taking innumerable pictures of the blossoms and themselves in front of the blossoms. We were also doing exactly that.

Ueno Park didn't do it for us either. It was close, I'll admit. But either the trees weren't full enough or the paths were too wide so that the sakura didn't block out the sky and give us the illusion of being surrounded by cherry blossoms. We are a tough crowd, I know.

Ueno Park. Lots of trees. Lots of people.

I don't how many "best places in Tokyo to see sakura" lists I read in preparation for this trip but suffice it to say that through late Friday morning of our Sunday through Saturday Tokyo visit, we were at a loss to say we'd been blown away by any of the places on those lists that we'd traipsed around the city to see at that point. I'd say we were most impressed (or maybe intrigued by potential is a better way to put it) by the trees at the center of Yoyogi Park (there's a photo below) and the trees along the banks of the Meguro River, which we visited at night on two separate occasions.

But we were not blown away, except by the last two places we visited: Shinjuku Gyoen (on late Friday morning) and Chidorigafuchi Moat (on Sunday morning). If I were writing a blog post about the best place to see sakura in Tokyo (and maybe I sort of am right now...) I'd start with these two and it wouldn't even be close. Am I an expert on this subject? Absolutely not. But these two places made our Tokyo sakura quest. They were head and shoulders above anywhere else we visited.

When we first walked into Shinjuku Gyoen, we saw the tree above. Right there, right then, I was sold. This was the most spectacular single tree we had seen in all of Tokyo. It was huge, it was more than just slightly pink-ish and it was in full bloom. It was incredible. Yes, there are a ton of people in front of it. It deserved the attention. Single most impressive tree in all of Tokyo that we'd seen in our almost full week there to that point.

But that wasn't it. The park kept going and going and unlike Rikugien Park, the sakura kept appearing. Individual trees. White trees. Groves of trees. Pinkish trees. Different species of trees next to each other. Full on pink trees. This is what we had been seeking. Were there ponds and bridges and walkways in the park? Sure there were. Were people picnicking on the grass? Sure they were? But the trees...I'm telling you the blossoms were just overwhelmingly gorgeous and just...there. In the full sun and in full bloom, this is what we came to see. They do exist. This would be the peak. It took until the sixth full day of being in Tokyo after walking what was probably about 50 miles (I'm assuming 2,000 steps for a mile, here) of hard city walking, but we got it. We got what we came for.

Shinjuku Gyoen is like an oasis of cherry blossoms in the city. We actually intended to visit the park on the Monday we were in town but noticed right at the last minute that the park isn't open on Mondays. It may have been a good thing that the place was closed, because we may have visited pre-peak and been disappointed. No such thing at the end of the week. Just an amazing place to see sakura.

More Shinjuku Gyoen, including some blossom close-ups.

Two days later, we found the sakura at Chidorigafuchi Moat, which is at the northwest "corner" of the old Imperial Palace grounds. The moat is a boating spot, meaning rowboats and paddle boats, some of the latter shaped like large swans. The grounds slopes steeply down precipitously in some spots to the moat and perched on the grassy lawns at the perimeter of the property are a series of picture-perfect sakura reaching out and down the hill to those people padding with their hands and feet on the water.

For those of us who decided to remain on land in this scene, there is a walkway at the exterior (meaning away from the old Palace grounds) which passes by every overhanging sakura. When we were there that Sunday, they appeared to be in gorgeous full bloom. If we hadn't been short of time (flight to catch later that same day...) we might have boated but it was enough to walk past and gaze. 

Like Ueno Park and Shinjuku Gyoen and well, pretty much every other place, the walkway around the moat was packed with sakura seekers, probably more so than usual because we were there on a weekend. The path was actually restricted to just one way traffic, it was that busy. We had to walk north along the non-sakura part of the path while jealously watching the people having the best time on the sakura side of the walkway. We eventually got there. It was worth getting to the right spot so we could bask in the glory of those trees.

I'm not saying here that the only places worth going to see sakura in Tokyo are Shinjuku Gyoen and Chidorigafuchi Moat but these two spots were definitely the best. They made our sakura quest. I think the pictures prove it.

Chidorigafuchi Moat. Note the manmade prop in the second  photo.

I have a few last things to say about sakura seeking in Tokyo. 

First, we never really got the hanami experience we wanted. I am sure a lot of it was weather-related and the fact that we hit the most hanami-worthy parks first thing in the morning when it wasn't quite late enough to start some morning drinking. We did see some pretty serious picnicking in both Shinjuku Gyoen and on a day trip to Yokohama but we never got the environment I hoped for, meaning groups of Japanese men and women gratuitously day drinking. I had fantasies of being invited to partake in sake drinking as a passerby and I have no idea why I thought that.

We did see a couple passed out on the Metro and speculated that they had been drinking all day at a hanami party. Sure enough, when we inspected them a little closer, we noticed a blue tarp stuffed into their tote bag. Hanami-ing for sure.

Getting ready for hanami in Yoyogi Park. Note that shoes are not worn on the blue tarp.

Hanami-ing in Yokohama.

Second last thing: the Japanese love to plant these trees along the sides of rivers. I guess this is supposed to create a tunnel of white / pink blossoms when the sakura are in full bloom. We found that the smaller the river was, the more successful this strategy was. We visited Sumida Park and found the Sumida River to be so wide as to negate the intended connection between the sakura on the two shores. We found the effect similar on the Oyoko River (see picture above). 

It worked pretty well along the Meguro River but especially well along the very small Shingashi River in Kawagoe.

Third last thing (there will be four "last things" in this blog post): we had the best intentions of visiting a number of different sakura spots at night to see how spectacularly these trees were illuminated after sunset. We never really made it to all the places we planned to visit, although we did walk past the sakura near the Tokyo Tower and we made it to the Meguro River twice after dark. A number of things un-did us here, including the weather, jet lag and other night-time commitments we made before arriving in Tokyo. There's maybe a regret here. Maybe. I'm not really a regret person so...

Almost hanami time in Oeno Park (top); sakura in Kawagoe (bottom). 

Fourth (and final) last thing: I had some notion that I would be able to pinpoint all the different sakura species around Tokyo after this trip. Why I thought this I have no idea. I guess I figured the information would be readily advertised either online or in the parks we were visiting. It wasn't. I think I can reasonably identify the somei yoshino but I might even struggle with that species in some spots. 

Why would I even mention this? Well, because there's a chance that some of the pictures I have posted are not of sakura at all. I have grave doubts (pun intended) about that gorgeous pink tree in Aoyama Cemetery being a cherry blossom but I just don't know. We generally used the presence of brown-eared bulbuls (they are birds) in the trees eating the seeds as an indicator of sakura-ness but honestly, we didn't wait for a bulbul to land in each tree we saw before taking some pics. Anyway, If there are pics on here that are not of sakura, I apologize.

I'm happy we visited Tokyo in search of sakura this year and I'm pleased with what we found, even if we were disappointed in some of the early returns. I think seasonal-focused destinations that emphasize one focus from the start to finish of the trip are good to take once in a while (I see this trip as similar to our Vienna Christmas market trip). This one worked. 

I'm finishing with a few more pictures of Shinjuku Gyoen which was without a doubt my number one spot here. There are a couple of helpful tips to find some of these things after those last pics.

The cover photo of this post is a detail of a silk kimono from the 18th century. The kimono is housed in the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park.

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Most all of the sakura we sought out in Tokyo were really pretty easy to find. Wander into a park and they are pretty much right in front of you, or just follow the crowd until you get to something incredible. However, we did have difficulty locating sakura in two spots. Some of this is related to a lack of clarity (I believe) in all online resources that I found. Here goes my attempt to clarify.

We took a cab to get to the Meguro River Cherry Blossom Festival because when we pinpointed the festival location on Google Maps, it was nowhere really near to public transportation. We showed our cab driver where to go and the hotel concierge helped us out by explaining to the cabbie what we wanted to go see. A very animated conversation ensued which I assume (with the benefit of hindsight) was the cabbie telling the concierge that we were asking him to take us to the wrong spot. He ultimately took us to where he thought we should be going, which was more correct that what we asked for.

Now that we've been there twice, we now know the right spot to go to visit the Meguro River Cherry Blossom Festival: take the Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line to the Naka-Meguro Station (Station H-01) and walk towards the river. 

It took us three tries to locate the Chidorigafuchi Moat. Our first attempt was to enter the old Imperial Place via the Hanzomon Gate at the west side of the property and the Moat with all those boats would be just inside the wall. When we got to the gate, we found it closed. It wouldn't have made any difference if it were open: that's not where the sakura are.

Then on our last day in Tokyo, we made another attempt. We took the Metro over to the east side of the Palace and walked in from there, assuming the inner moat was the spot to be. It isn't. The Moat with the boats isn't on the interior of the massive park that houses the Imperial Palace at all. We walked across the entire property before heading north and finding out exactly where the sakura are. 

The sakura around the Chidorigafuchi Moat are at the northwest corner of the Imperial Palace park. Take the Metro to the Kudanshita Station and start walking west on the south side of the street. You can't miss it doing it that way, I swear.

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