During cherry blossom season the entire population of Okinawa and some foreign tourists as well visit the northern part of the island to witness the first blooms in Japan. My friends and I mistakenly tried to visit a restaurant in Nago during that time period before hitting impressive traffic that made us turn around. Last year we waited so long to travel north that we missed the traffic, but we also missed almost all of the flowers. This year Alex and I tried Mount Yaedake during a weekday after the peak season, and found some of the most beautiful trees still a riot of color. Mount Yaedake just has a twisting mountain road with fewer guardrails than we were comfortable with, but it becomes famous for just a few weeks when the trees that line the road are in bloom. A few ice cream trucks open on either side of the road during this season, which seems a strange choice of business during January. To get some of the shots of the trees we had to park the car along the side of the narrow road, take the photo when no other cars were around, and jump back in the car as quickly as possible to avoid creating a traffic block. I became a little wistful as I realized this would be my last year living on Okinawa when the flowers bloom in January, but I am grateful that in three years I managed to hit all three famous sites for viewing: Nakijin Castle Ruins, Nago Castle Park, and now the mountain of cherry blossoms.
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