Fukushima: Blossoms Opening

Last week I was lucky enough to see an impressive number of cherry trees in full bloom around the country. This week, in an attempt to catch some more spots in their best viewing state, I've headed a little north to Fukushima (and watch out for my Sendai report tomorrow, too)!

Today, I only visited one spot, but what a beautiful spot it was: Hanamiyama. Named literally "cherry blossom viewing mountain," it shouldn't have surprised me to see the mountain covered in pink, but I think this is the most impressive sakura spectacle I've seen so far.

The park has over ten different varieties of cherry blossom, many of which were in full bloom on my visit. For these reports, we usually look to the Somei Yoshino variety, which is the most common, to give an overview of a park's viewing status. During my visit, the Somei Yoshino trees were only just beginning to open, with a few towards the base of the mountain at around 50% in-bloom, while the ones at the peak had barely started flowering. However, as there are so many other varieties around the park, I would say the park overall has now entered its best viewing period.

Accompanying the cherry trees was a number of other colorful flowers that were in bloom during my visit. In particular, there were a lot of yellow flowers creating a nice color contrast with the pink, such as the canola flowers and the forsythia.

There are three different courses to go around the mountain, taking 30, 40, and 60 minutes respectively. However, there is a decent walk from the bus stop to the beginning of the walking courses. There are currently buses (15 minutes, 500 yen for a round-trip) to and from Fukushima Station running multiple times an hour until April 17.