When the Sakura bloom in Japan, it’s like magic. Everyone, even busy people, stop to enjoy the pretty pink flowers. Tokyo is a famous place to see these flowers, but there are other amazing places in Japan too. If you want to see more cherry blossoms, keep reading about how to find them in the mountains of Japan.
One of these places is Nagano. It’s a beautiful area with tall mountains and hot springs where monkeys like to relax. People love to visit Nagano in the winter to ski and snowboard. Some people even ski until the end of April, when a holiday called Golden Week starts. Because it’s colder in the mountains, the cherry blossoms bloom later. So, you can see them in Nagano even after they’ve stopped blooming in Tokyo.
Hanami is a special time in Japan when people enjoy looking at cherry and plum blossoms. It’s a quiet time to think about how beautiful nature is. In Nagano, there are famous places to see these flowers, like Takato Castle Park, Matsumoto Castle, and Ueda Castle. But if you want to see the flowers without a lot of people around, you should go to Omachi. It’s a small town in the big Northern Alps mountains.
If you stay in a local Airbnb in Omachi, you can live like the people there and enjoy the cherry blossoms by yourself. The only things you’ll hear are the sound of water and birds singing. Small mountain towns like Omachi let you really experience the cherry blossom season. It’s different from the quick trips to the park in Tokyo where everyone is taking pictures.
Other locations where you can observe cherry blossoms
If you miss the sakura in Omachi, you can travel further north, where the sakura season begins later in the month. Oide Park, Hakuba, and Nozawa are just a few examples of places you can visit. Hokkaido is another fantastic place to see cherry blossoms from the end of April to the first week of May.
If you’re not scared to venture off the usual path, look for a little village in the highlands and explore it on your own terms. You will undoubtedly reap the benefits of hanami.
How to get there
The Shinkansen train from Tokyo to Nagano takes roughly 1 hour and 40 minutes. If you’re on a tight budget, taking the bus to Nagano will take you anywhere from 2 to 4 hours, depending on where you’re heading.
The Philosophy of Cherry Blossoms
So, what distinguishes sakura from a blossoming ume or wisteria tree? The solution comes in the short lifespan of the petals — shortly after the blooms have fully matured, the wind begins to sweep them away. Sitting under a sakura tree, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the fleeting nature of its beauty. The sakura philosophy is defined by the passage of time. The little, fair petals are not only a lovely natural sight, but also a metaphor for life itself.
This acceptance of the way of things characterizes the philosophy underlying sakura, and it is the reason why, in the end, it was the cherry rather than the plum that inspired numerous poems, drawings, songs, dances, books, and other works of art and ideas.
Nothing seems more evocative of human mortality than the sakura – and we hope you have a similar “wabi-sabi” experience on your own hanami in Japan!
