Hakodate ferry to Aomori journey was ace. The 4 hour trip gave me time to compile my drone photo entries for the 2024 Siena Drone Awards Competition. Its quite the process…you have to come up with a name and description for the series of photos you are submitting, also a name and description for each photo – and there is a word minimum and maximum. I was struggling to get to the minimum. Ah well, we’ll see how they go. Pleased with the set I submitted anyway.

I really wanted to see the Towada Art Centre, given its excellent reputation, but its closed on Mondays….arrrrh! Never mind, just took a few cute photos of the art work on the outside.

The next day, it bucketed down all day …for 200 kms down south as I was travelling, so the photos are from the IPhone. I have cherry blossom fever now that I’m further south and with 15 degree days, there is a chance for those little charmers to bloom. So I have my list of researched locations and also loaded a Satura App on my phone. Pity its such a crap day….anyway, onwards and onwards…

Ishiwarizakura (rock-split cherry tree) was my first stop in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture – an approximately 400-year-old cherry tree, measuring 4.3 metres around the base and 10 metres high,  growing out of a crack in a granite boulder outside a courthouse. It was proclaimed a National Treasure of Japan in 1923. And so well ‘supported’ as it grows.

Kitakami Tenshochi Park, also in the Iwate Prefecture, is right next to the Kitakami River and that’s the place you go for a stroll to admire the 10,000 cherry trees lining the 2km pathway, planted 100 years ago. Not today you don’t 🙂 I sneaked a quick photo at one end the pathway and darted back to the car.

I was driving through the lovely little village of Kitatenma, where houses are as you imagined they’d be in Japan, with veggie gardens; bonsai’d plants and niwaki’d cloud trees and saw this magnificent specimen of cherry in a kids park –

Bravely carrying on, my last stop was at Mizusawa Park in Oshu City, that was designed in 1878 by the wandering painter and landscape architect, Minomushi Sanjin and today, is filled with about 500 sakura. Took lots of pics but decided to scrap most…even greyer and more ‘blown out’ than the below pic. You have to be ruthless!

Dramas at the Hotel Crown Hills Sendai Aobadori. I booked because they had onsite parking. When I arrived, was told my rental car (a teeny tiny cube car) wouldn’t fit the car stack parking system. So the closest external car park was 400m down the road….very underwhelming experience, dragging luggage through rain to the hotel. Also cheesed off with Booking.com, who seemingly don’t care that their website about this hotel doesn’t mention any height limits on vehicles. GRRR! ….Thank you for the debrief.