Kawazu Sakura Festival

Apparently, in Japanese, there is an expression for a trip that relieves heartbreak or a sentimental journey and that is 傷心旅行 shōshin ryokō. That is what I felt when I booked this trip on a whim last week, three days before the trip’s day. It was a non-romance related heartbreak for me, but still, it felt really painful and the only way to feel better was to rely on my ikigai, which is traveling! So from now on my motto is: Feeling sad? Go on a trip! Feeling happy? Go on a trip!

I usually like to organize my trips and don’t often rely on travel agencies but some places are really hard to get to without a car. So, for this trip, I chose Tokyo Gaijins and it was already my second trip with them, I went on a day trip organized by them last autumn and I had so much fun and covered so many places in just one day, made many new friends and I definitely wanted to go somewhere with them again. So, when I saw their e-mail about this trip, I didn’t hesitate to book it.

This time it was again a day trip, all the way to Izu, Shizuoka to the Kawazu Sakura Festival. It was my first time to go to Izu but it has always been a dream of mine as it is a place often mentioned in Japanese novels such as Yasunari Kawabata’s Izu no Odoriko.

It is not far from Tokyo, it usually takes 3 hours to get there by car, however, because of the awful traffic on that day, it took us 6 hours to get there, and 6 hours on the way back as well… but I didn’t blame it on the agency because it was not their fault, who would’ve thought that everyone decided to go there, on that day, by car… The festival is quite famous, the weather was good and the sakura in full bloom, which explains why so many people decided to go on that day.

The trip started really well, we left Shinjuku at around 7:30 a.m. and this great view of Mt. Fuji waited for us in the first service area we stopped at.

However, as we started approaching Izu, the traffic got really bad and we could barely move… but at least we had a nice landscape on our way there and I took these photos from the bus. This was my image of Izu, beautiful sea, rich vegetation, colorful houses, beautiful mountains.

We had about 2 hours to spend at the festival, which was definitely not enough because there were so many things to do there: try local festival foods (sakura mochi, sakura taiyaki, sakura everything!), go to an onsen, have a picnic and so on. But we could enjoy even for a bit the beautiful flowers.

The Kawazu sakura is one of the earliest blooming cherry blossoms in the Kanto area (because we know that in Okinawa cherry blossoms usually start blooming much more earlier). In Tokyo, the cherry blossom season is around the end of March and the beginning of April. Not only are the Kawazu sakura special because they bloom early, but the flowers are also a bit different from the other types of sakura I’ve seen so far. They have large, vibrant pink flowers and they are in bloom for one month, from early February to early March, not only one week like the ones in Tokyo. This year the festival takes place from Feb. 10th to March 10th. If you plan to go, my first tip would be to take the train because the traffic there is to be avoided and apparently going by train is not as difficult as I had thought.

This type of early-blooming sakura can be found in other areas of Izu as well, such as Atami, and even in Shinjuku Gyoen, but what is special about the ones along the Kawazu River, is their number! The trees continue along the river for as long as 4km, starting from the river’s mouth near Kawazu Station to the famous Mine Onsen.