It’s my first cherry blossom season in Japan! Cherry blossoms are in full bloom as I type, this very minute, and really are that beautiful. Here are the things that have surprised me about cherry blossoms:

1)    They often appear more white than pink, at least in the Kyoto area
2)    The Japanese like to light them up at night, especially in temples and shrines, which gives them an other-worldly beauty
3)    From far away, they look kind of like popcorn
4)    They only stay in bloom about a week at the most. Because they’re so fleeting, the Japanese think of them as a metaphor for life.
5)    Cherry blossom trees don’t actually produce cherries. (Am I the only one who didn't know this?)

This past weekend, I went to the mountains to see cherry blossoms. Yoshino-yama, or Mount Yoshino, is in Nara prefecture, about 2 hours south of Kyoto by train. It's the most famous spot in Japan for cherry blossoms, or sakura. It’s a whole mountain just bursting with 30,000 sakura trees. When I went, they weren’t in full bloom yet—maybe about 60% full—but were quite lovely.

To get to Yoshino-yama, you take a gondola up the mountain.

The town of Yoshino is like any other bustling Japanese tourist destination—full of shops selling pottery, tea, and famous local goods.

Yoshino appears to be famous for its mushrooms, as a lot of vendors sold a variety of fresh and dried mushrooms, including shiitake, one of my favorites.

My friends and I ate lunch in an udon and soba restaurant overlooking the nearby cherry trees.

I ate sansai udon, which contains “mountain vegetables,” including root vegetables and mushrooms. It was okay--the quality of the ingredients were so-so, with stale-tasting udon, alas.

Yoshino sells a variety of sakura-flavored goods, including sakura ice cream. I ate this adorable bowl of sakura ice cream in a café overlooking sakura. It tasted sweet and tart.

Like the udon and soba restaurant, the cafe was gorgeous--surrounded by sakura trees.

As we walked around Yoshino, we even found a restaurant that sells sakura soba!

During sakura season, the Japanese like to have picnics under the sakura trees, eat, drink, and drink some more. They call this ritual hanami. It was chilly the day we went to Yoshino-yama, but there were still some revelers hanami-ing it up under the trees.

The next day, I wandered around my neighborhood, east of Kyoto. It was a warm, sunny day, and the local park was full of hanami action, including even a handful of food stands and vendors, in case you wanted to celebrate sakura with your very own stuffed Care Bear.

Children were running around, some of the younger locals were playing impromptu music with bongos and rattles, and people like me wandered around taking pictures of it all.

I stopped by the local shrine, which also had sakura in full bloom, and a few people sitting on the plastic swing set, chatting and gazing at the sakura.

A lovely end to a lovely afternoon.

Next post: Cherry blossoms at night!