Japan Photo Guide

Even though I am about as far away from Japan as possible, I am super excited about the 2009 cherry blossom season! Partly because it looks like I will be able to make it to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms blooming in 2009! Yay! In any case, to get everyone excited, here is a short video slideshow with some of my favorite cherry blossom photos from my stay in Japan. Make sure you turn up the volume, but put on some headphones if you are at work! Enjoy!

There are two wonderful and exciting things about February in Japan. First is the Sapporo Snow Festival, and the second is the cherry blossom forecast! The forecast has not been released yet, but usually the first one is released in the middle of, or late February. Check back again as I will post information as soon as I find it is available. Until then, check out some cherry blossom photos from years past!

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Edited on February 25th.
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Here is the latest forecast from Tenki.jp! Looks like things will be a little early this year with Tokyo and Kyoto around March 25th.

********UPDATED 3.6********

Now that the Sapporo Snow Festival is over, the next major thing to look forward to is the blooming of the cherry blossoms trees. Below is the first released forecast for the 2008 cherry blossom season from tenki.jp. The site is in Japanese, but here is google’s translation which you might be able to make some sense out of. Keep in mind that cherry blossom forecasts are not an exact science and are very subject to change.

Basically because of a warm winter, they are expecting earlier than usual blooming dates. Also be sure to check out sakurazensen if you can read Japanese, or try your look with google’s translation if you can’t. Just so you know, sakura zensen means cherry blossom forecast, so if you wanna do your own research you can google the kanji “桜前線” or try sakura zensen. Here is my previous post about cherry blossoms in general.

UPDATE 2.19 Weathernews.jp has released their own forecast.

UPDATE 3.6 Now the Japan Meteorology Agency has released their forcast.