The trees stand differently on the two sides of the bridge. The Kintaikyo is a wooden arched bridge over the Nishiki river at Iwakuni, and the city's account puts Somei-yoshino along the riverbank on the near side, and more of them among the temples and old buildings around Kikko Park on the far side, with further blossom up on the stonework of Iwakuni castle above.

By the river the trees are an avenue, planted in a line along the bank. Beyond the bridge they are set among architecture instead.

Crossing is therefore not just a way of getting to the park. It is a change of arrangement.

There are also roofed pleasure boats on the water, and they give a fourth position: looking up at the bridge and the blossom from below, with the timber arches directly overhead. Bank, bridge, boat, castle: four positions on the same view. Very few of the hundred sites offer that many places to stand, and the fact that they are all within twenty minutes of each other is what makes Iwakuni worth a slow afternoon rather than a quick photograph. The timing given on this page is not the city's; it comes from the weather record for Shimonoseki. The city's own listing puts the blossom in four places at once: the riverbank, the temples around the park, the castle stonework above, and the surface of the Nishiki river itself.