The mountain with the cherry trees on it is itself a monument. Kyoto prefecture records Mount Kasagi as a National Historic Site and Place of Scenic Beauty, with remains connected to Emperor Go-Daigo at the summit and, scattered across the slope, boulders with Buddhist figures carved into them. The park takes in the mountain and the gorge of the Kizu river running below it.

The trees are Somei-yoshino and wild cherry, and they flower from late March into the first days of April, ahead of the Omuro grove across the prefecture by a fortnight.

Say cherry blossom in Kyoto and most people picture a temple garden or a canal with a stone path beside it.

This is neither of those things. It is a mountain and a river gorge in the far south-east corner of the prefecture, an hour and a half from the city, where the blossom appears in scattered patches among rock the river has cut through, nothing about it laid out or tidied. You climb past carved buddhas older than most of the famous gardens, and from the top the water is a very long way down, threading between rock walls. It belongs to the same prefecture as Arashiyama and does not resemble it in any respect at all.