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Cherry blossom (“Sakura”) started last week in Tokyo, and it peaked just in time for the weekend. Now I understand why this is considered such a major event in Japan – it is truly astounding! We feel very lucky to have arrived just in time to see this.

The whole city seems to be in flower as there are cherry trees everywhere in the streets, let alone in the numerous parks. In fact our building is surrounded by beautiful cherry tree alleys, and we only have to glimpse out of the window to see them. I hadn’t even noticed all those trees before, but now they are so densely covered with white blossoms that they have converted whole streets in kind of a snow-white flood. It looks almost unreal, like elaborate paper artwork – and even more so at night, when the trees are illuminated.

People here are in a very special mood these days. Everybody is constantly taking pictures of the trees. So did I, except that I was about the only one using such an outdated stand-alone digicam for this purpose, rather than a high-tech mobile phone (although of course I have one of those, but haven’t quite figured out yet how to use all of its functions…).

Most importantly though, there are festivities going on all over the city, featuring a lot of eating and drinking. In Ueno Park, probably the most famous site for the Sakura viewing, they sell everything you can possibly stick on a skewer or eat with a toothpick (I opted for takoyaki, some yummy mini-octopus-filled fried dumplings). Most people though bring their own food and drink (usually plenty of both) and have pick nick somewhere underneath the cherry trees. It is very hard though to find a spot unless you arrive very early or have one of the apparently reserved sites along the main avenue. The sight of this was really amazing – particularly on the weekend Ueno Park was absolutely packed with people, cheerfully eating and drinking on blue plastic picknick covers. For some reason the whole event strongly reminded us of a Japanese version of Octoberfest…

Of course Simon and I went to have a look at this main attraction (after all the Sakura avenues in Ueno Park ARE magnificent), but then decided to join the less overcrowded (though still very popular) festivities on the plaza right next to our home, which featured different live music, and – of course – food (again had some mini-octopus, this time in the form of grilled skewers).

So spending the whole weekend eating this and that, and completely overwhelmed by the Sakura festival, I didn’t have much opportunity to try out any new recipes myself, but got plenty of new inspirations for the weeks to come…