Today was a laid back Saturday for me. Anthony was on a trip with his grandparents and Fumie was working on ballet, so I stayed home to try to make a dent in the unending backlog of stuff I'm behind on. But with the blossoms starting to come out in force and the temperature approaching 20°C (66°F), I couldn't resist to step outside a bit with the camera. The mood outside was wonderfully relaxed, an uncrowded, low-key version of the cherry-blossom joie de vivre that I've written about before. It was really nice. I expect next weekend will be the [...]

Well, perhaps not the first in all of Japan, considering that the cherry-blossom season can start in early January in the southern islands, and also not first considering that some varieties of cherry have been blossoming for weeks already here in Kyoto, but this morning I found the first cherry blossom in the local area, which is populated with Japan's "standard" Yoshino Cherry.

I was happy to have noticed the one single blossom among all the buds on all the trees around. By the time I returned from some errands, more had appeared, but this was the lone blossom at [...]

In a week the area of Kyoto around where I live will be packed with blossoms and packed with people enjoying them, but for the moment things are pretty sparse...

The cherry-blossom timelapse that I posted a few years ago starts on this date, and if the same schedule holds (which it normally does... the blossom season being early or late by more than a day is notable news) shows that by a week from now, the trees will be well on their way toward full bloom. Full bloom will likely hit in about 10 or 11 days.

At the [...]

March is a time of hope in Japan... hope for a good cherry-blossom season, hope for a nice spring, hope for the coming new school/fiscal year (the school year and most companies' fiscal year start in April). Maybe this week has more worry than hope, but hope will return.

I mentioned the other day in "Surprising Early Cherry-Blossom Preview Hits Kyoto" (about a snowfall that made the cherry trees look as if they are in bloom), it's about time for a "Cherry-Blossom Preview" type post, and I linked to some preview posts from earlier years. I'd still like to do [...]

On the family outing to some nearby still-snowy mountains the other day, we noticed that the maple trees are starting to bud, with an odd rust-colored fringe...

Up close, it was easy to see what was happening...

Elsewhere along the drive we found a tree with big, pink buds.... likely plum.

I don't know for sure whether they're plum, but it's likely because we're well into plum-blossom season. Even two weeks ago another Kyoto blogger posted about plum blossoms in Gion, and in prior years I've posted about them as early as late January.

The plum-blossom season winds down early, [...]