Cherry blossoms blooming at Ueno Park

If you are visiting Tokyo around this time and are looking for a good place to see cherry blossoms, you should head over to Ueno Park where the blossoms are in full bloom this week. Hanami, as the Japanese call it, is a spring festival for viewing of cherry blossoms and parties under the sakura (cherry) trees.

Typically during the hanami, people go to the park in early morning hours to find and secure the best place for a picnic and then wait for others to join, whether it’s family members, friends or coworkers. These parties can go on until late evening.

Hanami is so popular in Japan that tourist agencies offer travels around the country just for the purpose of viewing cherry blossoms and meteorologists every year try to predict very specifically where and when the sakura will start blooming. There are even special web sites like this one for the purpose of following the blooming and forecasts.

Besides many other parks in Tokyo, Ueno Park is one of top favorite places for viewing. It might be interesting to know how many people gathered here during this time. Maybe 1000, 10,000, 50,000? Not even close! According to TV reports, in one single day (Saturday, April 3rd) there were about 1 million people visiting Ueno Park despite the gloomy weather during the evening when it started raining. Of course that’s not an obstacle, so the next day, on Sunday, again about the same amount of people visited the park.

Digital fortune teller booth.

It’s well taken care of for the starved crowd; people can get various kinds of Japanese style fast food, meaning mysterious dishes like okonomiyaki, oden, takoyaki and more international ones like baked corn, french fries, Turkish kebab and similar snacks. It’s interesting that despite this massive gathering there was no music to be heard anywhere. A bit of a different type of party than usually in the West.

While strolling around the food stands, we came across a fortune teller who usually aren’t that interesting for an average Japanese. And I don’t mean your typical gypsy fortune teller with a crystal ball — this one was giving predictions right out of the computer (see photo on the left). The guy had a scanner on the counter where you place your hand and then wait a bit until the computer gives a proper analysis of your future. How much can you believe this system? According to the sign on the booth, these digital predictions are 90% reliable. Fair enough!

As is common during the hanami, the cherry trees were decorated with long rows of bright red lanterns which turn on in the evening. The signs written on them usually mean names of companies and shops that sponsor the festival.