Brace yourselves, the sakura photos are coming! I thought I’d start off the post-holiday blog saga with some cherry blossom highlight photos from Tokyo, where we spent a whirlwind 4 days. Here’s a theory: Britain would be 120% happier if we planted some sakura trees around the country.

A traditional English picnic’s all well and good, but it doesn’t beat the scale of the cherry blossom viewing in Japan. People turn out in droves and gather on neat blue mats and sit for hours just watching the blossoms in bloom (or fall, depending on the timing). Companies are also in on the action and it’s usually the job of the intern to bag the best spot very early in the morning and hold it until everyone else turns up. As if that all didn’t sound lovely and cultured enough… no one leaves any mess! A nice change from scattered beer cans and sandwich bags.

Honestly, I don’t think we could have been luckier with the sakura and if you’re thinking of planning your first (or second, third…) holiday to Japan, I really recommend picking very late March/early April. Of course, the sakura forecast varies around the country but here are our top two recommendations for sakura viewing in Japan: Ueno Park and Yoyogi Park!

Ueno Park

Generally, Ueno seemed to be filled more with families and tourists. We went on a Tuesday but it was still packed!

Ueno had very cutesy bins to encourage recycling!

And, of course, a mascot…

Yoyogi Park

Yoyogi Park is close to Harajuku, the fashion hotspot, so it was unsurprisingly filled with young people having leisurely picnics…

Green tea ice cream and sakura ice cream crepe. What does sakura taste like? Kind of perfumey and sweet.

Of course, you can walk pretty much anywhere at the right time of year in Japan and find some lovely sakura. The pictures never really do the blossoms justice but they do give you some idea of the serenity. Watching falling cherry blossoms is such a calming thing to watch (and I caught some on my camera – so that will surface eventually!

But wait – there’s more sakura! Here’s a slide show of some of my other favourite shots in Tokyo!

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Coming up next on the blog… Sensoji temple!