Some of these trees were given away. Izumi Shizen Park, in the hills east of Chiba city, has a hanami ground of eight thousand six hundred square metres, and about a hundred of the cherry trees in it came from the former imperial stock farm at Shimousa when the farm let them go. Around the meadow there are roughly three hundred more, Somei-yoshino and yama-zakura and sato-zakura among them.

The city gives the flowering as the last part of March into the first days of April. That is early, and it is over quickly.

What makes the park unusual is the ground it sits on. There are five ponds, a valley cut through the middle of it, and a suspension bridge strung across that valley at roughly the height of the treetops.

Which means you look down at the blossom rather than up at it. The water is at the bottom, the trees are on the slope, and from the middle of the bridge the flowering is below you and slightly in front, the way you would see it from a low window. Hanami is a looking-up activity almost everywhere else, and the reversal takes a few minutes to settle into. Which hundred came from the farm is not recorded anywhere, so walking around will not tell you.