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4/17/2005, Cherry blossoms (hanami) at the mint (zouheikyoku) in Osaka

Around noon, we had lunch with Akemi's mom at a fancy restaurant in a high-rise building that specializes in homemade tofu dishes. Then, we headed for the Osaka mint (zouheikyoku). The mint is generally closed to the public. But, they have a road lined with cherry trees that is very beautiful in the springtime, so they let people inside the gates once a year for cherry blossom viewing (hanami). Yeah, they let people in. A lot of people.

Having enjoyed the cherry blossoms in much less crowded places the previous weekend, I was really surprised at the number of people I encountered in Osaka. I expected more people in a big city. But not this many. That said, the cherry blossoms were very beautiful, with all different colors of trees. And, it was a nice walk. Somewhere between ¾ of a mile and a mile, I guess. That's around a kilometer.

As we approached the area, I was surprised to see a rush of people moving in our direction.

The Osaka Police had a very active force set up to control the crowd, mainly just trying to prevent accidents with cars and prevent trampling accidents.

Notice the special vehicle deployed on the left. You don't see that very often.

Moving toward the blossoms, the crowd got thicker and thicker. Lots and lots of folks.

And, there were lots and lots of security workers and police officers managing the crowd.

These folks are police. They seemed to take the whole thing pretty seriously.

And for good reason. It was a sea of people.

Finally, we reached the cherry blossoms.

I took some pictures of the cherry blossoms.

More of my pictures of cherry blossoms.

Something that struck me about all this was the number of people taking pictures of cherry blossoms. Everywhere you went, there were security and police people telling you in very strong terms that stopping to take pictures was dangerous and top stop taking pictures immediately. Everybody ignored this. Everywhere you looked, there were folks taking pictures of the cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are a national symbol in Japan and an important part of the culture. Since they only come around a couple weeks each year, I guess people like to make them permanent by taking pictures. At least, that's my theory. But, I took lots of pictures of people taking pictures of cherry blossoms.

Taking pictures of cherry blossoms.

Tight security throughout the journey.

I do kinda wonder why they need three cameras on this thing. Or, maybe the two parts on the side are lights for use during night cherry blossom viewing. I know they do that in some places.

It was a large crowd event like any other. Lots of trash. But, it was all well managed and the Japanese people are pretty good about this. So, it was well contained. My guess was that maybe 100,000 people went through the area that day, based on the density and time of day when we visited. Just a ballpark guess.

But, it was a great experience to enjoy these wonderful flowers with so many other Japanese people. Seeing their great interest in the cherry blossoms reminded me what a neat culture they have in Japan, that viewing cherry blossoms would be such a unifying force for so many people.