Back in March I went to Vancouver with my datemate right when the cherry blossoms were at full bloom.

Mountains with cherry blossoms over Beaver Lake
Posted in Photography, Travel, tagged cherry blossoms, hanami, sakura, stanley park, Vancouver on 2016/04/11| 2 Comments »
Back in March I went to Vancouver with my datemate right when the cherry blossoms were at full bloom.
Mountains with cherry blossoms over Beaver Lake
Posted in Photography, tagged cherry blossoms, sakura, Vancouver on 2015/04/06| 3 Comments »
I may have missed the UW campus cherry blossoms, but I had a chance last month to see the cherry blossoms in Vancouver, BC, and they were gorgeous. These, of course, are not the only places in the city to see them, but Granville Island, Devonian Harbor Park, and Stanley Park were all easily accessible from the place I was staying downtown.
In Ishikawa, we used to say that the overcast weather actually made the flowers seem more vivid. I certainly treasured them more after the constant snow and wintry mix, when the landscape was no longer a white-out and the first colors (other than the camellias) emerged.*
Posted in Kanazawa, Photography, tagged cherry blossoms, cloudy, 花美, hanami, Jokichi Takamine, Kanazawa, sakura, spring, Takamine residence, 桜 on 2013/04/15| 3 Comments »
While we did get a few spectacularly sunny days in Kanazawa for hanami, two cold fronts and storms rolled through during the two weeks of blooming. Kanazawa, moody as always.
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Posted in Ishikawa, Photography, tagged cherry blossoms, 芦城公園, 花見, hanami, illumination, Ishikawa, Komatsu, lanterns, light-up, night, photography, Rojo Park, sakura, 小松, 桜 on 2013/04/08| 1 Comment »
The sakura were in full bloom in central Ishikawa at the end of last week. I managed to squeeze in some night-time hanami (flower viewing) at Rojô Park (芦城公園) in Komatsu before the storm hit us last weekend.
Posted in Culture, Kanazawa, Photography, tagged cherry blossoms, Kanazawa, Kazuemachi, Kenrokuen, photography, plum blossoms, sakura, tea district on 2012/04/23| 6 Comments »
I admire plum blossoms more than sakura on principle. Plum blossoms bloom in the last throes of winter, often surviving Ishikawa’s final snow storm. They smell sweeter and are more tenacious. There’s nothing sakura can do in form or shape that a plum can’t: they can be subtly tinged with pink or violently fuchsia; they can hang from delicate weeping boughs or bloom among thick, gnarled branches. But perhaps because of their staying power, taking several weeks to blossom fully, then remaining for another week or so before fading, they don’t induce the same joie de vivre that their more famous cousin, the cherry blossom, does.