Japan
Yoshino
Thirty thousand cherry trees blooming up a sacred mountain in pink tidal waves.
The mountain turns pink in stages. Some thirty thousand cherry trees cover Mount Yoshino in bands that bloom from base to summit through late March and April, each elevation a new act of the same performance. Yoshino, in Japan's Nara Prefecture, is the most celebrated blossom mountain in the country, and its cherries were planted not for picnics but as offerings to the mountain gods.
Yoshino has been a centre of Shugendō mountain worship for centuries: the ascetic En no Gyōja is credited with founding the practice here in the 700s, and Kinpusen-ji's Zaō-dō hall is the second-largest wooden building in Japan after Nara's Great Buddha Hall. Many of the mountain's shrines and temples are more than ten centuries old, and in the fourteenth century Emperor Go-Daigo ran his exiled court from here. Pilgrims still pass in robes blowing conch shells bound for the sacred peaks beyond. Autumn reverses the spring, with maples burning from summit to base and costumed ogres dancing in the temple hall.
Solo
Walking from base to summit at peak bloom, alone with the trees and the pilgrims — stay overnight and go early.
Couple
The mountain in bloom or in autumn fire — either season, Yoshino is intense enough to need sharing.
- Some thirty thousand cherry trees carpet the mountain in ascending bands of pink from late March through April.
- Kinpusen-ji's Zaō-dō hall is the second-largest wooden building in Japan, at the heart of a Shugendō tradition founded here.
- Kuzu, the mountain's arrowroot starch, is cut into cool translucent noodles and dumplings that taste of spring water.
- Autumn reverses the spectacle — maples flame from summit to base, and ogres dance at the temple.
Kuzu-kiri and kuzu-mochi from Yoshino arrowroot — cool, translucent, tasting of mountain spring water.
Kakinoha-zushi, salted mackerel on rice in a persimmon-leaf wrap, the mountain pilgrim's provision.
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