As sakura season brings a pure joy to Spring in Japan, Sachin Rao crosses the country chasing its fabled cherry blossom.

The sky is blue, the air is warm, and it’s snowing in Tokyo. This isn’t the wet and cold variety, though; this magical precipitation is pink, and comes not from the clouds, but the treetops. All around me, thousands of whisper-soft flakes are fluttering down, swirling in the spring breeze before dusting roads and pavements, coats and car roofs, heads and outstretched hands. This is sakura season in Japan: the brief but spectacular nationwide flowering of the cherry blossom tree. 

For centuries, the Japanese have fervently embraced this iconic natural phenomenon. But their love for sakura is not just because it is unabashedly beautiful; it is also deeply symbolic in Buddhist philosophy. This marvellous display is hauntingly fleeting (just a fortnight or so); as such, it mirrors the ephemerality of life, and reminds us of the value of savouring every precious moment before it’s gone. 

Sakura season is a particularly fascinating time to be in Japan because it provides such a contrast to the typical perception of this country as a hypermodern assault on the senses. The pace of life is delicately recalibrated to celebrate the arrival of spring, by indulging in hanami — blossom appreciation; literally, ‘flower viewing’. Parks and tree-lined streets all over the land become a giant open-air art gallery of panoramic pink polyptychs, with thousands of people picnicking under the cotton-candy bloom.

Driving through sakurazaka in the leafy suburb of Roppongi, I ease off the pedal and soak in the view through the windscreen and sunroof as I roll down this serene ‘sakura avenue’, sunlight sparkling through the pale pink canopy. 

Tokyo’s high-rises shrink in my mirrors as I catch the westbound Tomei Expressway. Like most things Japanese, this toll highway is high quality: smooth, well marked, swift and orderly. Overnighting in Nara Prefecture, I make a pre-dawn dash for the local prize: Mount Yoshino. 

This gentle peak in the Kii Mountains is elevated from pleasant to jaw-dropping when its tens of thousands of cherry blossom trees are in bloom. The vista is hard-earned, with a considerable amount of squeezing my SUV through Yoshino town’s steep and narrow streets. But the panoramic view does not disappoint, with rolling clusters of blossom filling the senses, the lenses, the very air. 

Back on the expressway, I head through the tangled Osaka bypass and then into Kyoto. With 1/25th the population of Greater Tokyo and mostly low-rise buildings, Kyoto immediately feels cosy. It was the seat of the Japanese emperor for over a millennium, until 1868. Holidaying regional visitors playfully dress the part with rental kimonos, especially along the sakura-lined promenades of the shallow Kamo River, and in Gion district where traditional wooden buildings house an exuberant mix of geisha restaurants, grill-bars, pachinko parlours and curio shops. 

With sakura season drawing to an end, it’s time to make the final leg of my journey, to Hiroshima, albeit under roiling grey skies shedding fat drops of rain.

Charming central district aside, Hiroshima’s appearance — not unexpectedly, given the tragic events of 1945 — is that of a fairly recently built city. While the urban environment is itself testament to the incredible spirit of resilience that was needed to rebuild it into the industrial hub of today, there’s one spot that’s particularly moving. The Genbaku, or Atomic Bomb Dome, more properly the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, is the eerie, skeletal remnant of one of the very few buildings that survived the nuclear blast. It drives home what it must have taken to restore life and commerce here. 

I glance at the last few clumps of cherry blossom left on the branches: they slowly yield to the rain, knowing only that they will come back again, brighter than ever, to the delight of millions. 

Words Sachin Rao
Photography Shutterstock / Agathe Marty / Atul Vinayak / Crystal Kay / Hakan Nural / Unsplash

ROADBOOK

CLASS: mountain pass

NAME: Japan in Bloom

ROUTE:  Tokyo to Hiroshima

COUNTRY: Japan

DISTANCE: 600 miles