You climb to get to these trees. Eboshiyama Park sits on the hill directly above Akayu, a hot spring town in southern Yamagata, and a number of slopes and stairways run up to it from the street where the inns are. About a thousand cherry trees grow at the top, of twenty-five different varieties. Some of the Somei-yoshino are over a hundred and twenty years old, and there is a stand of Edo-higan.

Twenty-five varieties is a lot for one hill. It means the trees do not agree with each other about when to open. On a single afternoon you can find the lower slope in full flower and the top still tight, or the other way round, depending on the year and which path you took.

The prefecture gives the season as the middle to the end of April. That is later than the plain below, which is what the extra height buys you. The trees at the very top are the last of them to go over.

The climb is the point, though. People come up from the baths with their hair still wet, in the slippers the inn gave them, and take the stairs slowly because there is no reason to hurry. From the top you turn round and look down at the roofs of the town you were in twenty minutes ago, with the flowers in between.