Friday April 11, 2014
Boulder, Colorado
Gorgeous Spring Day
Writing this from my sister's place in Boulder, Colorado. Decided to spend a couple of days with her and her family before heading back to Tokyo after a grueling week in Vegas for NAB.
Gorgeous in Boulder. Hard to believe a snow storm will be hitting the town Saturday nite, just after I leave for Tokyo.
Anyhow, the subject of this blog is cherry blossoms. We had quite a long winter in Tokyo albeit not as severe as the Northeast of North America. So as I mentioned in my last post, plum season was late and I got to enjoy the beautiful plum blossoms the last weekend of March. Then, all of a sudden, the temperature rises in Tokyo and boom, all the cherry blossoms popped. Experts said they would only last about 10 days or so. So on a rainy Sunday at around 5am , I power walked to Chidorigafuchi to check out the blossoms.
It was not raining hard and just misty so it was a nice walk especially since the roads were deserted. Chidorigafuchi is very famous for the beautiful cherry trees lining the moat of the Imperial palace. It is always packed with people and I don't find it pleasant at all to enjoy the cherry blossoms when its packed.
But before getting to Chidorigafuchi, I decided to check out a local park nearby which has the most beautiful magnolia trees. Usually, it's the plum blossoms, followed by the magnolias and then the cherry treees. But given the crazy weather I was curious how the magnolias were doing.
Well, they were in full bloom! I don't think I've every seen the magnolias bloom the same time as the cherries. I was fortunate to get some photos of the magnificent flower as I knew they would all disappear in a day or so given the pouring rain expected later in the day.
Magnolias
I then headed to Chidorigafuchi which was deserted. Unbelievable. Absolutely no one until the end of the walk where I ran into a fellow expat. It was definitely worth getting up early to basically have the whole place to myself.
The other "expat": The only other person at Chidorigafuchi early on Sunday AM
I was very lucky as about 10 minutes after finishing the walk along Chidorigafuchi, the skies opened and it poured. As I missed cherry blossom season last year due to work, I'm very grateful that I was able to enjoy it peacefully this year.