More Plum Blossoms
Eyepopping displays of plum blossoms continue to delight through mid-March. Here’s where to see the best plum blossom groves in Tokyo
•
Girls’ Day (Hina Matsuri)
From mid-February through Mar 3 (the actual holiday), sacred doll sets are displayed in households with daughters. The town of Katsuura (an overnight trip from Tokyo) displays over 40,000 of these dolls all over town in the weeks preceding Girls’ Day. Even if you’re more Goth than girly, these dolls are works of art—often made by National Living Treasures—and they’re worth marveling over.
In Tokyo, you can see these insanely expensive dolls at major department stores like Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya in Ginza and Nihonbashi, as well as at the doll stores in Asakusabashi
•
Firewalking Festival at Mt. Takao
Every year on the second Sunday of March this shrine at Mt. Takao invites the public to a grand firewalking ceremony. When the enormous bonfire has dwindled to red hot coals, priests belonging to a strict ascetic order walk across them, then the public is allowed to follow (if they dare!)
Search term: firewalking takao; hiwatari matsuri takao
•
Cherry Blossom Season
In Tokyo the cherry blossoms usually start to bloom around 3/24 and reach their peak around 3/30. And if you guess wrong, you still might catch one of the other cherry blossom seasons.
Here are the best places to see cherry blossoms in Tokyo, with maps showing where to find the stands of early-blooming, classic, and late-blooming trees
And here are the destinations that have especially great displays that start to bloom in March:
Here are the best places to see cherry blossoms lit up at night
Here are my favorite SECRET cherry blossom spots: all of the pink, none of the crowd
•
Exhibits of Nihonga-style cherry blossom paintings
Many Tokyo museums schedule cherry blossom-themed shows in March and April—click here for links to check on what they’re all planning for while you’re there—but there are two that have excellent sakura shows every spring. The Sato Sakura Museum…
and the Yamatane Museum…
both have killer collections of traditional Japanese nihonga-style paintings, and their curators put together unusually interesting shows featuring The Pinkness.
It’s also a lovely time to take a stroll through the Yanaka neighborhood and stop into master nihonga painter Allan West’s studio to see what gorgeous cherry blossom paintings he’s working on.
•
If you enjoyed this, subscribe!
Get all the latest Japan travel tips and tricks for free ヽ(*＾ω＾*)ﾉ
And here are the other places I take my friends when they come to town
•
Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
Jonelle Patrick writes about Japan 