This is the river you cross before Ise. The Miyagawa embankment carries about seven hundred cherry trees over a kilometre, according to the city, on a stretch designated a prefectural place of scenic beauty, and the trees are lit while they are in flower.

The river mattered here long before the trees did.

Anyone walking to the Ise shrines from the east had to get across the Miyagawa, and for centuries that meant a ferry, an inn, and an unavoidable pause on the near bank. It was the last obstacle and the last chance to wash before going on, which gave the crossing a function that had nothing to do with scenery.

The cherry trees came much later, and they are planted along the flood bank rather than at the crossing itself, so this is not quite the historical spot. But it is within sight of it, and people have been stopping on this stretch of the river for a very long time before there was anything here worth photographing. Walk the embankment in early April and there is a wide slow river on one side and the town of Ise on the other, and the shrines are still the better part of an hour ahead of you, which is roughly how it has always been. The timing given on this page is not the city's; it comes from the weather record for Tsu.