Welcome back to Japan!
Since Japan opened its doors to oversea, we are so glad to see people are coming back to Japan.
After three years, we will have the first sakura season which is about to come. Cherry blossom, or called sakura in Japanese, it is one of the most popular seasons that tourist come.
Sakura has a mercurial character, and every year, it changes its blooming time. Depending on how warm it gets on spring, it fully bloomed as early as 22nd of March, or 3 of April, while they only stay for ten days.
When our clients tell me their travel schedule, I can always discuss where to visit to capture best condition of sakura. Besides Tokyo metro area, we have many locations to offer for sakura.
The first location to offer is, yes, Tokyo, where we are located.
Tokyo used to be one of the biggest cities in the world. But do you know that we have so many gardens and parks with greens even in urban areas? Almost all those parks give you opportunities to view sakura trees. Only thing is, yes, so many people.
To enjoy the sakura and capture a nice photos without people on your background, you need to arrive there as early as 7 am, or wake up 4-5 am if you start from preparation for a wedding dress session.
But believe me, it worth waking up early time!
If you want to avoid mass of people, or want to capture sakura photos with larger space, let’s drive about 40-60 min. to suburban area of Tokyo, such as Tachikawa.
Our recommendation is Showa Kinen Park, the largest park in Tokyo, covering 1.5M square meters! It’s like going to a picnic. In fact, some of our clients brings a lunch box for the photo session, and after dress session is done, they just take out a sheet under the pink trees, and just take a good nap there.
If your travel schedule does not match to end of March / early April to catch the best sakura season, don’t worry about it. You can travel to south of Izu Peninsula, about 2 1/2 train ride from Tokyo, to experience early blooming one, called Kawazu sakura.
The best thing about Kawazu sakura is, their blooming time is pretty long, between early Feb. to early March, almost one month.
Oh, I forgot one more thing. I like the way they actually offer sakura on the top, and yellow canola flowers on the ground. What a wonderful contrast!
Checkout more sakura images from our past blog post
Another location to go is Kawaguchiko, about two hours ride from Tokyo, the best view point of Mt. Fuji.
Since sakura blooms about ten days later there than Tokyo metro area, I often take clients there in case your arrival date is a little late, or sakura blooms too early on your visiting year.
We visit all over Japan to capture sakura photos. Among all, one of my favorite places was Nagano’s 4km long, lines of 600 sakura tress.
Last ten years, I have seen many places famous for sakura tress, but it was the best yet to experience that line of pink flowers continued as long as you can run for 20 min.
Because Nagano is located in a mountain region of central Japan, their blooming time is pretty late, around end of April.
You can view more photos from Nagano area from our Japanese version of blog post
To sum up, You can enjoy sakura actually between early Feb to Late April, about two months long, if you look for a place.
From here, please check more of sakura photo from our previous sessions.
Looking forward to seeing you soon!
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