Okay, so yesterday's post about Japan's Cherry-Blossom Season Off to an Early Start was somewhat misleading. I normally write about things in Kyoto where I live, but Fumie and I took a short trip (just two nights) to Okinawa, a string of Japanese islands in the East China Sea, well beyond Amami (which we've visited twice, and I've blogged about many times), about half way between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan.

We returned yesterday, and I posted some cherry-blossoms that we discovered while exploring Okinawa. To be fair, though, I have to note that the locals told us they expected [...]

Japan's cherry-blossom season has arrived a bit early this year. During a drive in the mountains yesterday, we came across some cherry blossoms that were just starting to bloom.

There weren't many blooms yet, but already lots of buds....

I normally don't post new cherry-blossom pictures until mid-to-late March (last year's "It Has Begun: Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto" went up on March 25th), although new plum blossoms do come a month earlier, with 2007's first plum-blossom post arriving in mid February, and last year's "Plum Blossoms at the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine" just catching the tail end of the plum-blossom on [...]