Having just watched an episode of Cardcaptor Sakura after a long layoff (anime-wise, I’m still incredibly backlogged), it seemed like a good time to do a cherry blossom post.  They’ve opened about a week earlier than usual this year – though with global warming, “usual” is creeping earlier and earlier.  The sakura have already hit peak in Tokyo, and seem likely to get there in Kansai in a couple of days (I have a major outing planned for the end of the week, hoping to nail the timing).

This first batch is from the pleasant bedroom community of Nishinomiya, sandwiched about halfway between Kobe and Osaka, well known for its sakura.  The trees there are concentrated along the river, where a park runs for several hundred meters in both directions from the JR station.  I would say these guys were at about 80% of peak, impressive but not quite “there”.  That said, there are some really old cherry trees in that town (somewhere in Kobe, there’s one purported to be over 1,000 years old, though the skeptic in me wonders if cherry trees can really live that long).

After that I headed over to Sumadera, a mountain temple (the “-dera” designation is the tipoff) in West Kobe, a couple of stops past mine.  It’s modest as compared to the Goliath mountain temples which pepper Kansai, but still a fairly impressive complex with a good deal of relics, many from the 14th Century.

Finally it was back to my neighborhood for a little further exploration, including the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine which sits a couple of blocks (though those blocks are just about straight up) from my building.  This is a classic case of a “sleeper sakura” spot – the nice lady at my rental office told me about it.  While it’s not a huge swathe of trees, the setting and placement make all the difference – and the sweeping views of Kobe and the ocean seal the deal.