“In the cherry blossom’s shade

there’s no such thing

as a stranger.”

A haiku by K. Issa

After last week’s final show of late snow, spring is starting to gently warm us up here in Slovenia, so I was reminded of last year’s incredible spring fairytale experience in Japan. Not only was I lucky enough to go on a week-long business trip to Japan with two of my coworkers, our visit also directly coincided with the sakura cherry blossom season, which only happens once a year in a very narrow time window and we got to experience it in all 3 main cities: Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo.

Cherry blossom season is probably the most popular seasonal festivity in Japan and also the one on most people’s travel bucket lists, as all the cherry trees in Japan blossom at the exact same time for just a few short days. The main reason why Japanese cherry blossoms are so popular is because the cherry trees blossom synchronously and without any leaves, leaving the trees adorned in just the delicate pure white or gently pink flowers for a truly fantastical landscape that has inspired many haiku poems like the one in the opening of this blog post. The blossoms also start to fall at about the same time which makes for a peculiar, melancholic type of spring snow.

The exact timing of mankai, the full cherry bloom, is naturally a really hot topic on the local news and Japanese scientists struggle to predict it as accurately as possible. The Okinawa region is usually the first to bloom from mid-January to early February, followed by the main cities like Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo in the last weeks of March to early April, while the northern areas like Tohuko and Hokkaido enter the full bloom in mid-April to early May. P.S.: The Hokkaido region is also famous for the autumn pumpkin festivals, which are still on my list.

The typical flower viewing activity is called hanami, which means to picnic or more often simply to get drunk under the cherry trees. Contrary to Western stereotypes about Asians and alcohol tolerance, both Japan and China have a strong drinking culture, so beer and sake, the rice wine, are an integral part of the daily Japanese experience. Public drinking is legal in Japan and hanami is a socially acceptable excuse to party, so it’s quite normal to see locals and tourists with bags full of beer cans and snacks looking for a small spot to set up their picnic tarp underneath the cherry trees and they will get quite boozed. In fact, historical haikus and other sources dating back to the Nara period in the 700s show that hanami was always very much about the intoxicating joy of spring, with literal intoxication. 🙂 Apparently they used to observe plum trees flowering at first and the tradition only shifted to cherry trees in the Heian period about a century later.

Hanami in osaka

What I loved about Japan in general, however, was that no matter how crowded it got, either in the cherry blossom parks or on the public transport, the Japanese still found a way to preserve each other’s personal space and the crowds were somehow quite tranquil. It was a bit like watching a carefully coordinated, elegant dance where all the dancers are moving to the same quiet beat of the drum, always conscious of all the other people in the wider space and anticipating their next move. For someone who tends to get anxious in large crowds that was a blessing. I found the Japanese culture to be a unique mix of elegance and warmth, carefully walking the line between polite respect and genuine hospitality. To be fair, the majority of my experiences were business meetings and formal interactions, but I got the same impression while observing the Japanese with their friends and families in public spaces as well.

There are several spots around Osaka with clusters of hundreds to thousands of cherry trees, such as the Osaka castle park where we sat down for our beer and snacks, including a very smelly, dubious dried squid I picked out on a dare that was such a challenge for our European palate it sadly ended up in the garbage. Fun fact: it is quite difficult to find a public garbage can in Japan, as the Japanese are extremely conscious of waste management and used to taking all of their small trash home. While we could not spare the time to wait in line for the Osaka castle interior and museum, the castle is a beautiful 16th century reconstruction and one of the most famous castles in Japan. The castle grounds are open to the public and free to visit.

Besides the Osaka castle park, the following are supposed to be some of the best hanami spots in Osaka: the Osaka Mint Bureau – a government agency that opens its gardens to the public during sakura season and also operates a mint museum, Kema Sakuranomiya park, Satsukiyama park on top of a local hill with a playground and a zoo, and Yamanakadani, also quite well-known for its cherry blossom festival. Some places also offer yozakura, illuminated flower viewing at night with light installations, which we saw from afar but did not have the time to experience. Since sakura time is one of the biggest tourism highlights in Japan, all the souvenirs of course include cherry blossom themes and there are limited editions of pretty much every drink, snack, chocolate and candy brand out there.

Osaka castle

During the evenings we spent our time in Dotonbori, the famous Osaka food district by the river. Osaka is the second largest city after Tokyo and generally known as the food capital of Japan – even with my limited experience I can say that it is rightfully so. Dotonbori is a colourful, crowded and chaotic mix of wide avenues and narrow riverside streets, that nonetheless seems to function according to a clear set of cultural rules and people even mostly respect the traffic lights in the crowd. There are loud, flashy and sometimes animated cartoonish advertisements several storeys high that try to lure you into specialised food places or tiny izakayas, the local versions of after-work beer pubs. The riverside is dominated by the gigantic Don Quijote souvenir shop, one of the largest discount shops in Japan, distinctly marked by a garish yellow Ferris wheel. The whole shop is like a capitalist amusement park and I promise you, it’s worth braving the crowds as you don’t want to miss this particular experience – all I will say is that you should pay close attention to some of the more unusual articles on the shelves and get ready to be amused.

There are a lot of unspoken rules about food and drinks in Japan, such as not eating on-the-go while walking, unless it’s a street festival; the first round in an izakaya is always beer to avoid that awkward waiting time while everyone chooses their own preferred drink; and also that you should always pour the shared drinks for others and never for yourself as someone else will surely notice that your cup is empty and refill it. There are so many places in Dotonbori that it is worth picking out a place online first to avoid getting lost, but even if your chosen place is full, there will likely be 3 similar good ones just across the street, as long as you obey the golden travel rule and pick one that is frequented by locals, not an expensive tourist-only trap. Arriving on time is seen as cutting it close and being even 5 minutes late is considered rude, you can usually pay with a credit card everywhere and there is no tipping as that can also be considered rude. As for my personal favourite, even the tiniest dive bar will probably have a fancy Japanese spa toilet.

Impressions of Dotonbori

Although we didn’t have that much time for sightseeing in between business meetings (I was really hoping to catch a tea ceremony), we managed to maximise the amount of different Japanese foods we tried, with a lot of help from our business partners. The variety of flavours was amazing, as well as the level of attention to detail that was characteristic of everything we experienced in Japan, so the food deserves its own blog post (soon!). However, in this post you can already see two different tiny ice tea bottles I came to be obsessed with, despite my usual aversion to soft drinks and single use plastics. At least Japan’s rate of plastic bottle recycling is extremely high (over 80%), even if they do incinerate most of their plastics waste. Vending machines with sodas and all sorts of ice teas that actually taste like real tea were everywhere and I tried hard to try them all. Also, while there were a lot of matcha sweets everywhere, matcha lattes appear to be more of a Western thing and were not as popular as I expected outside of Starbucks.

Some photos by my coworkers.