ALPHABET TRAVEL CHALLENGE
In Search Of Sakura In Japan
A to Z of my favorite travel destinations — J is for Japan
J was actually harder than I expected. I’ve been to quite a few places that start with the letter J and I liked them a lot. There’s Jerusalem and Jordan, which I also plan to write about later. I also love the Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer trilogy which I visited during my tour through Rajasthan.
Japan has always been near the top of my list of places to visit but it took me until my late fifties to finally make the journey. And since I was planning on a spring visit, the thing I was most looking forward to was being in Japan during Cherry Blossom Season.
The day before I left for Japan I saw a news story that said the cherry blossoms had opened in an explosion of color, but the video they used must have been from a previous year because when I arrived, while a few buds had opened, the trees were still in their dormant stage. Still, I was hoping I’d get a chance to experience the beauty of the Sakura.
I made a special trip to the neighborhood of Ueno, a short walk from Asakusa. Ueno is home to the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Western Art, and the National Museum of Nature and Science. There is also a huge park there, Ueno Koen, that features hundreds of Sakura or cherry blossom trees and at night is lit up by hundreds of paper lanterns.
Unfortunately, it was still too early in the season and there were only a couple of trees that were starting to bloom. Still, those trees drew in crowds of admirers armed with their phones and their cameras.
Sakura is big business in Japan with displays in most big department stores featuring cherry blossoms in their displays.
I managed to take some great photos though and it was nice to see some green space after being in the midst of so much concrete earlier in the day.
As I traveled through Japan I expected to see more and more Sakura blossoms but it seems the country is biodiverse so their schedule was off as well.
It looks like I would have to wait until I got back to Canada to see any of the Sakura blossoms that spring.
Thank you for reading. For more of my favorite travel destinations, you can check out my list of stories:
