Blossoms!

In 1912, as a sign of friendship, the mayor of Tokyo City gave 3,000 cherry trees to Washington DC.  While we’ve never been fortunate enough to make it to DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival, we were excited to have the opportunity to go to Japan this year during the cherry blossom season.

Cherry blossom season usually peaks in Japan at the end of March.  Because we were to arrive in Japan the first week of April, we knew there was a good chance we'd be too late.

Turns out, the unseasonably cool spring in Japan had delayed the blossom season – it appeared that we’d arrive a bit too early.  If you looked close, you could see that the cherry and plum trees were budding, but for the most part, they looked stark and winter-like.

After a couple of days, the trees had a bit of pink haze to them, but it seemed the blossoms were reluctant to make an full appearance.  After several days of hoping, and practically begging the pretty pink flowers to come out, we’d decided that Japan even if we missed the spring spectacular of blossoms.

Then, when we were walking through Kyoto one cool (but sunny) afternoon, the buds silently burst open.  I would liken it to popcorn popping in v-e-r-y slow motion.  It was simply stunning.  See for yourself:

We took a gazillion photos and tried to soak in as much of the natural beauty as we could for our last day and a half in Kyoto.  It was a good thing – it started to rain and didn’t stop the remainder of our trip.  We couldn't have planned it any better!