Last Hanami opportunity in Japan

Sakura viewing season has almost come to an end this year in Japan. After an early blooming across Kansai and Kanto regions in March, Cherry Blossom is finally starting to bloom in the Northern cities of Hokkaido, such as Hakodate, the small coastal city that I had my impeccable Hanami session a year ago around this time.

As we know it is tricky sometimes to try to catch the Sakura full bloom, especially when they bloom at different time year by year and for only 14 days before falling off. What we forecast and the actual timing could differ by as many as weeks. This happened this year when Tokyo had their Cherry Blossom bloomed as early as mid March when the local weather forecast expected it to happen only 2 weeks later! Then again its progress slow down towards the North when temperature suddenly dropped back to its norm.

So this year we have a slightly longer period of Cherry Blossom blooming in Japan, from early March in Fukuoka until now in Hakodate. Eventhough the flowers are not opening at the same time, it is still possible and considerably easy to follow the trail and catch them with the convenient high speed Shinkansen railway or domestic flights.

For those who missed the beautiful Sakura scenes in Tokyo or Kyoto, and are only traveling to Japan this week, you can still have a chance to experience the Hanami session in Hakodate’s Fort Goryokaku (五稜郭), one of the best place to see the Japanese national flower in Hokkaido, Japan. You can learn more about Fort Goryokaku and Cherry Blossom images captured in the park from my earlier blog post on Catching Sakura Full Bloom at Fort Gotyokaku. It was amazing and is one of my best travel experiences so far.

If you cannot make it this Spring, Koyo session or Autumn colours viewing would be another great experience to have in Japan during Autumn, from September until early December. Either period, make sure you plan a trip to Japan this year as Japanese Yen ¥ has dropped almost 25% if compared with the rate a year ago and makes traveling in Japan a truly valuable holiday option you can hardly find elsewhere. Oops! Perhaps I’m too obsessed and selling too hard. Who cares? Japan is my choice of the impeccable travel destination! 🙂 – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.