Above: Cherry blossoms at a shrine light-up in Otsu.

Cherry blossom season is winding down in the Kyoto area, but I have many more pictures to share. In my last post, I blogged about the cherry blossoms I’ve seen during the day. I’ve also been exploring cherry blossoms by night.

During sakura season, at night, the Japanese like to light up their sakura at temples, shrines, and parks--it's kind of like Christmas in spring. I recently went to Miidera temple in Otsu, Shiga, just northeast of Kyoto, to see its nighttime light-up of cherry trees. The cherry blossoms, or sakura, were in full bloom, and it was a clear, not-too-cold night—perfect for seeing the sakura.

Miidera has many wooden buildings--over 40, in fact--spread out on different levels of the base of Mount Hiei, on the border between Kyoto and Shiga prefectures. For the first twenty days of April each year, Miidera lights up its many sakura trees and lets visitors roam around the complex for free (many, if not most, of the famous temples and shrines in Japan charge small admission fees).

When lit up at night, the sakura trees have a pinkish-silver, silent glow that I can only describe as other-worldly. At Miidera, the trees were so bright and vibrant in the dark night, and the grounds and visitors were so quiet and hushed, that it felt like I'd stumbled into another world.

The most impressive part of the light-up was the sakura trees that arched over a long set of stairs leading to a set of buildings called the Kannon-do. The branches of very old, very tall sakura trees arch over the stairway, creating a cloud cover of cherry blossoms overhead. When you gaze up at them at night, they look like massive stars (that, or lit-up popcorn).

The cherry blossoms overhead were so mesmerizing that, as I walked up the stairway--which, on the side walking up, has no rail between you and the mountainside--I had to remind myself to watch where I was walking and not fall over.

After our visit to Miidera, my Kyoto-native friend took me to the nearby Biwako canal, which carries water from Shiga’s Lake Biwa to Kyoto. The Biwako canal was lined with lit-up cherry trees, creating another out-of-this-world view. Seriously, with the water steadily flowing and the silver-pink tree branches draped over the canal, I felt like I'd walked into a scene from a fantasy movie. Or a computer screensaver.

And my favorite part of the night? A shrine in Otsu that my friend and I came across, on our way to dinner. The shrine was right across the street from our restaurant, and was a wonderland of lit-up cherry trees in full bloom. The branches of the cherry trees were so long and thick with cherry blossoms that walking around the shrine was like walking through a cloud of floating flowers.

There’s nothing quite like looking up into the branches of a soaring cherry blossom tree and seeing layers upon layers of blossom-laden branches, reaching from the tip of your nose to what may very well be the sky. It's actually pretty trippy.
 
Although it was nearly 10 o’clock by the time we went there, there were still a handful of visitors walking around the shrine, quietly looking at the blossoms. There was also a very jolly-looking group of older adults, enjoying a late-night hanami picnic under the cherry trees. That's the life, my friends.

I have to admit that, after my visit to Yoshino-yama, I thought that cherry blossoms, while pretty, are not quite as beautiful as autumn leaves. But after seeing the quiet, still beauty of cherry blossoms at night, I am now a believer.

Bravo, Japan.