The cherry trees here go all the way round a lake. Kumamoto prefecture writes that about 10,000 of them were planted to encircle a reservoir 13.4 kilometres in circumference, with the peak from late March into early April. The road that follows the shore becomes a tunnel of blossom, and a fountain in the lake throws water up to eighty metres.

The lake is artificial.

It exists because a river was dammed, and the ring of ten thousand trees exists because people put them there afterwards. Nothing about this site was found in place; all of it was made, and its entry on the national list of a hundred is in that sense a piece of engineering with planting attached to it.

What distinguishes it is probably the shape rather than the number. Ten thousand is a large count, but several sites on the same list are counted in thousands as well. Very few of them close a circle. Following this one means covering thirteen kilometres and arriving back where you started, with blossom on one side and water on the other the whole way, and no single point along it that can be called the main view. A place laid out like that has no best spot to stand, which is unusual for somewhere chosen for how it looks.