Sakura viewing 2011

Every year, Japanese people look forward to spring, especially to beautiful cherry blossoms.  Sakura blooms in the beginning of April down in Kyoto and Tokyo area, but in Northern Tohoku (Northern part of the main island), we don’t see cherry blossoms until the last week of April, beginning of May. This year, cherry blossoms symbolizes a lot more to Japanese people than beginning of a new season. After the earthquake, this is something that a lot of people thought of as an event to look forward to, to be hopeful about—no matter what happened in the past, the spring WILL come and Japan will look as beautiful as ever before.

Since our original plan to go south to Morioka/Sendai area to view cherry blossoms this year fell through, we decided to make a repeat trip to Hirosaki—west of Misawa—but catch sakura at its peak.  It’s truly a guessing game with cherry blossoms because although a forecast says that it would start blooming on April 23 and reach its peak on April 30th, it’s all not 100%. We went on April 30th, last Saturday. The weekend before Golden Week—the busiest travel week for Japanese since they have almost that whole week off work.

After a little over 2 hours (with no DVD players or anything for kids!) we arrived to Hirosaki area. It took us another 30 minutes or so to get to the castle itself because of insane traffic:) We found our usual parking spot (500 yen for 2 hours), packed up our lunch stuff, and went looking for a picnic spot. Japanese call this cherry blossoms viewing “hanami”. They bring a picnic, gather with friend, listen to music and enjoy looking at the beautiful trees and flowers.

Watson’s version of Hanami. Katya, Alex and Mark have been now eating only BIG carrots—no more baby carrots in this house.Right in front one of those serene Japanese ponds. Their faces depict the calm and peaceful feeling that we get travelling with these three children across Japan. 

So the whole celebration at Hirosaki is in a form of a festival—but no parade. That means crowds of people and dozens of food stalls with festival food.

Walking next to the cherry blossom tunnel. This part wasn’t fully blooming yet, but it was still very pretty.  

We tried Apple ice cream—more like sorbet.

We did not try these octopuses.

And we did not dare to buy fish on a stick.

No more trying "black brick" treats this year. We settled for something more appetizing (looked like a long pink French baguette)—we think it was glazed sugar candy….but still not sure…it was very good!

Robert and I decided that spending a couple of hours walking around looking at cherry blossoms and taking pictures teaches the kids that our trips don’t have to be only about amusement and entertainment. It’s good to sometimes simply enjoy the nature and its beauty.