One of the most tantalizing features of a visit to Japan is seeing sakura - cherry blossoms – which paint the landscape in cities and countryside a magnificent pale pink from March through May.
The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) maintains a fascinating and useful website that each year forecasts the dates and location of cherry blossom season. And because Japan stretches a thousand miles from south to north, sakura bloom from mid-March through mid-May.
This spring, the cherry blossoms are expected to bloom first in the country’s southernmost island, Kyushu, on or around March 19. They are expected to blossom in Tokyo on March 20, and in Hiroshima on March 21. About a week later, they will open in Kyoto. As spring progresses, cherry blossoms will bloom in Tohoku prefecture in northern Honshu in early April. The season will make its gorgeous way northward, with blossoms appearing in Hokkaido island’s Sapporo in the last days of April, and on May 12 in Hokkaido’s Kushiro.
Americans have been obsessed with Japanese blossoms for more than a century, ever since Japan gifted the USA 3,000 cherry trees to be planted along the shores of the Potomac. Every year, thousands of Americans flood to Washington, DC to see the glory of the trees that bloom for just two weeks. But on a visit to Japan, visitors have two months to enjoy nature’s splendor.
2024 has been officially designated by the U.S. and Japanese governments as US-Japan Tourism Year, and tourism in both directions is expected to increase significantly.
For more information on this year's cherry blossom forecast, please visit: https://www.japan.travel/en/see-and-do/cherry-blossom-forecast-2024/.
Image credit: Cherry Blossoms near Kintaikyo Bridge © JNTO
