Tiny things in Japan – Learning a very local life of Japanese

The first article of this blog is about Cherry blossoms (Sakura in Japanese) in Japan. In full bloom of Cherry blossoms can be seen at the end of March through beginning of April around Western part of Japan. I live in Fukuoka which has a little early season of cherry blossoms than the other cities in Japan.

As you may know the climate in Japan, we have four types of seasons such as Spring (March~May), Summer (June~August), Fall (September~November) and Winter (December~February). Even though the climate in Japan is totally different between North and South, there are four seasons for each part of Japan.

The leaves grow and many types of flowers start to bloom in the Spring. As the temperature gets warm in March, Cherry blossoms start to bloom from the Western Japan through the North. And finally the blooms of Sakura ends at Hokkaido in May. It looks like the spring season move up from South West of Japan to East North parts.

It’s not difficult to find and access to the parks which has a few hundreds of Sakura trees. And it’s usually held the festival while the trees are blooming. Many Japanese people check the dates for those festival and adjust their schedule for the best timing to visit those major parks to see the full bloom of Sakura trees.

On 31st of March, I visited Maizuru park (舞鶴公園) which is close to my place. It was not on the festival but there were many people as you can see in these photos below.

Japanese people usually drink, eat, and sing with friends or family or colleagues under the trees. So it is important for some people to get and keep the best position to see Cherry blossoms and those people usually spread some blue plastic sheets on the ground and keep this place until the day of Sakura viewing party.

On the same day, I visited this park at night and took some photos of Cherry trees.Trees were lit up at night and they looked totally different from the daytime.

To visit this Maizuru park, you can use either the subway or bus. If you come from Tenjin station(天神) by bus, get off at Fukuokashi Bijutsukan Higashiguchi （福岡市美術館東口）, or NHK Hoso Center Iriguchi (NHK放送センター入口). By subway, get off at Ohori park station.(For more information, search “Maizuru park Fukuoka Japan” on Google map)