Cherry blossom, region by region: when to actually be where

It opens in the far south, on Kyushu, in the last week of March. It reaches Hokkaido in the far north in early May. Between those two points it travels north at roughly 15 miles a day, gaining a few days of delay for every thousand feet of altitude on the way. Six weeks separate the first petals in Kagoshima from the last in Sapporo.

Once you understand that, the planning question changes. It stops being “when is cherry blossom season” and becomes “given my dates, where should I be standing”. That is a much easier question, and it usually has a good answer.

The wave, region by region

The windows below are typical, drawn from the long-run averages our Tokyo office works from. Any individual year moves by up to a week in either direction, and we confirm the current season forecast for your dates before we commit anything.

The pattern that matters: for any given week between late March and early May, somewhere in Japan is at peak. A trip that moves north with the wave can see blossom on ten separate days, in ten different places, without ever chasing it.

Why the forecasts move, and how much to trust them

Japanese blossom forecasts are the most scrutinised botanical predictions on earth. The national broadcasters run them, several private weather companies compete on them, and they are updated every few days from January onwards.

They are also genuinely uncertain until about ten days out, for a reason worth understanding. Somei Yoshino, the cloned cultivar that makes up the great majority of Japan’s cherry trees, needs a cold winter dormancy followed by accumulated warmth in late winter to bloom. The trigger is roughly the total warmth banked from early February. A mild February pulls the season forward by a week. A cold snap in mid-March pushes it back.

Because the trees are clones, a whole city flowers within a couple of days of itself. That is what makes the spectacle so complete, and it is also what makes the timing so unforgiving. Peak bloom, mankai, lasts about a week from opening. A day of heavy rain or wind in the middle of that week strips the petals and ends it early.

So plan for a window, not a day. Our practical rule: build a trip that puts you within a plausible blossom band for eight to ten days rather than trying to hit a 48 hour peak, and include at least two locations at different latitudes or altitudes. That way a season that runs early or late still gives you blossom. Chasing a single perfect date is how people end up disappointed.

Golden Week, and why we plan around it

Golden Week is a run of Japanese national holidays clustered from 29 April to around 5 May. It is not a foreign tourism event. It is the week the entire Japanese population travels domestically, and it changes the country.

What happens in that week: Shinkansen reserved seats sell out, sometimes weeks ahead. Hotel rates in tourist towns rise by half or more. Popular ryokan are simply unavailable, having been booked by Japanese families the previous autumn. Roads out of the cities jam. Restaurants that normally take a booking two weeks out cannot take one at all.

None of that makes travel impossible. It makes it expensive and less pleasant. Our approach is to plan around Golden Week rather than through it. If your dates are fixed inside it, we book everything unusually early, put you in cities rather than resort towns, and use the days when the domestic crowd is travelling rather than arriving. If your dates are flexible, we move them.

The exception worth knowing: northern Tohoku and Hokkaido are at blossom peak during and just after Golden Week, and they absorb the domestic crowd far better than Kyoto does. If you are locked to early May and want blossom, north is the answer.

The honest advice: go later

This is the part most articles will not say plainly, so we will.

The second half of the blossom season is better than the first. Not slightly. Meaningfully.

The first week of April in Kyoto is the single most crowded, most expensive week in the Japanese travel calendar. Philosopher’s Path is shoulder to shoulder. Restaurant tables that would be available in October cannot be had. Hotel rates are at their annual high, sometimes double what the same room costs six weeks later. And the blossom itself, viewed through a phone screen held up by the person in front of you, is not obviously better than the same trees in Kanazawa nine days later with a tenth of the people.

Push a week or two later and almost everything improves. Rates fall. Reservations open up. The blossom moves inland and north to Kanazawa, Takayama, Matsumoto and Tohoku, which are quieter, cheaper and, in the case of Hirosaki, more beautiful. The weather warms. The alps become passable. And you are travelling alongside Japanese domestic visitors rather than in a queue of international ones.

We say the same thing to almost every client with flexible dates: mid to late April is the better trip. If that is not possible, the second best answer is to start in Kyushu in late March, before the international season begins, and travel north.

The cost difference is not small. See our full two-week Japan budget for what the peak week does to accommodation.

Two shapes of blossom trip that work

The northward run, 14 days, late March start. Fukuoka and Kyushu, then Hiroshima and Miyajima, then Kyoto and Nara as the blossom opens there, then Tokyo. You travel just behind the front the whole way. This is classic Japan in 14 days with the order set by the wave.

The inland run, 14 days, mid-April start. Tokyo, then Matsumoto and the alps, then Takayama and Shirakawa-go, then Kanazawa, then Kyoto for the late-blooming varieties. Blossom against mountains and snow, and a fraction of the crowd. See Japan in 14 days through the alps.

A note on the late varieties. Not every cherry in Japan is Somei Yoshino. The weeping shidarezakura and the heavy double-flowered yaezakura bloom one to two weeks after the main wave. Kyoto’s Ninnaji temple and parts of the Imperial Palace grounds are still flowering when everyone has gone home and declared the season over. If you arrive a week “late”, ask where the yaezakura are.

Booking lead time

For any trip touching late March to early May, book six to nine months ahead. The bottleneck is never flights. It is the small ryokan, which hold eight rooms and are taken a year in advance by returning guests, and the restaurants. If you want blossom and a good ryokan night, that decision needs to be made in the autumn before.

Plan this trip

Give us your dates, even approximate ones, and a Japan specialist will tell you honestly where the blossom is likely to be and build the route around it. The first outline is free.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Japan: the complete guide to planning your trip
• How much does two weeks in Japan really cost?
• Tokyo in four days, by neighbourhood rather than by sight
• Ryokan etiquette, without the anxiety
• Japan in 14 days through the alps
• All our Japan trips

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