Is Cherry Blossom Season in Japan Worth It?

For a week the whole country looks up. Salarymen eat their lunch on a bench beneath a single tree; a grandmother photographs her grandson against a branch outside a convenience store; the evening news carries the bloom's progress up the map as seriously as the weather. The Kamo river in Kyoto becomes one long, slow party along its banks, and the old canals of Gion carry the petals down past the teahouse doors.

Hanami means sitting down. Rugs are laid beneath the trees, food and sake are brought out, and a whole afternoon is given to the canopy overhead. The emperor's court in Kyoto kept it with poetry; the townspeople of Edo kept it along the Sumida river, where the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune planted cherries so that all of the city could join in. Japan has never stopped.

After dark the season changes key. Yozakura, the blossom by night, is a tradition of its own: in Maruyama Park, at the top of Gion, the great weeping cherry is lit from below and stands against the black hill like a fountain of pale light, and along the Chidorigafuchi moat in Tokyo the lit branches lean so far over the water that the blossom is seen twice, once in the air and once on the dark surface beneath it. The night is cool, and the paper lanterns of the food stalls sway along the paths.

And then the season lets go. About a week after full bloom the wind begins to take the petals, and there is a word for that too, hanafubuki, a snowstorm of flowers. Standing in one beneath the weeping cherries of the old palace park in Kyoto, the petals turning in the light and settling on the shoulders of strangers, the question of whether it was worth it does not arise.

Full, at the famous names. Japan received a record 42.7 million overseas visitors in 2025, and the blossom brings Japan's own travellers out in the same fortnight, with the schools on their spring break and the business year beginning in April. Along the Meguro river in Tokyo the ward's mayor has asked visitors to walk a one-way route and keep their voices low for the neighbours. In Gion, signs at the mouths of the private lanes have turned visitors away since April 2024.

The crowd is narrow. It keeps to a handful of places, at a handful of hours, at the weekend. A canal walked in the long light of late afternoon, a temple garden on a Tuesday, the palace moat at dusk when the boats have gone in: these are the same season, entire, and they are a matter of knowing the city, never of luck.

And the crowd itself is part of the pleasure, a good-natured one. On the morning of a company hanami the newest employees are sent out early with a blue tarpaulin to claim a patch of lawn, a custom called bashotori, and by dusk the same lawn is a long table of colleagues, sake and grilled skewers beneath the lanterns.

Cherry blossom away from the crowds →

In this fortnight the room decides the season. A room in Gion or Higashiyama puts the lanes, the canals and the evening at the door: the walk at dawn before the city stirs, the return at dusk with the lanterns lit, and no taxi queue at the start of any day. In Tokyo, a hotel near the Imperial Palace puts the moat at Chidorigafuchi within a walk, its cherries arched over the water.

Luxury Japan Travel keeps its cherry blossom guests in Gion for exactly this reason. The blossom of Kyoto is best known from inside the old city, and the old city keeps its loveliest hours for those already in it.

Kinosaki, on the Japan Sea, keeps the season in its own way. Guests of the town's ryokan walk the willow-lined canal in yukata and wooden geta between its seven public bathhouses, and in April the cherries along the Otani river lean over the little stone bridges, their petals carried down on the current past the inn doors.

Mild, fresh and changeable. On the Japan Meteorological Agency's thirty-year normals, Kyoto's April days average 20.1°C and its nights 9.2°C; in the last ten days of March the afternoon reaches about 15.5°C and the night falls to about 5°C. Tokyo runs a fraction cooler by day. Rain falls on about nine days of April in both cities.

There is a word for the cold that so often comes with the blossom: hanabie, the flower chill. A morning of clear sun turns to a cool wind by mid-afternoon, and the evening picnics are wrapped in coats and blankets. Rain has its own beauty in the season. Petals cling to wet paving stones, the moss in the temple gardens deepens to a darker green, and a branch above a dark wall burns brighter than it did in the sun.

The season offers a second spring a month later. The front reaches Hakodate and Sapporo in late April and early May, around 2 and 6 May for full bloom on the long-run normals, and at Matsumae, on Hokkaido's southern tip, some two hundred and fifty varieties of cherry carry the bloom for close to a month. The parks of the north are wider and its towns further apart, and the spring there has an openness Kyoto's never will. Our Hokkaido cherry blossom tour is timed to it, from 28 April to 10 May 2027.

The late bloom: cherry blossom in Hokkaido →

• A room in the old quarters: Gion and Higashiyama in Kyoto, the palace moat in Tokyo.
• Three nights in Kyoto, enough for the quieter gardens as well as the famous ones.
• Hours chosen for the light: the canals and moats in the soft light of late afternoon, the parks for a long lunch beneath the trees, the lit branches after dark.
• Hanami taken sitting down, a rug beneath the trees, a meal and a slow afternoon.
• One break from the cities: a night at an onsen town on the Japan Sea, or two at the foot of Mount Fuji.
• A small party, moving through the season as one, at its own pace.

None of this is a secret. It is the way the season has always been kept: as an occasion to be arranged, never a sight to be chased.

A twelve-day cherry blossom itinerary for Japan →

Japan cherry blossom season 2027: the forecast, city by city →

The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan is the season kept this way. From 30 March to 10 April 2027 it travels from Tokyo by way of Mount Fuji to Kyoto, Kinosaki and Osaka. Three of its nights are in Gion; two are at the foot of Fuji, each room with its own open-air bath with Fuji in view; one is in Kinosaki, the onsen town of seven public bathhouses. It sits down twice for hanami, beneath the trees of Yoyogi Park and in the park of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, with bentos from Michelin-starred kitchens.

It is limited to 8 guests and guaranteed to run from two, led every day by Luxury Japan Travel's own Tour Directors.

How to choose a cherry blossom tour of Japan →