This one flowers in winter. In the Japan Meteorological Agency's 1991 to 2020 averages, full bloom at Naha falls on 4 February, while at Tokyo it falls on 31 March. That is a gap of close to two months. No peak-bloom period is published for the park itself, so the timing given on this page is taken from the Naha record rather than from the city, and it is not an official figure.

The tree is different here.

Okinawa prefecture gives the flowering season of kanhi-zakura as January to February. It is the cherry planted across the islands, and it opens while the trees on the main islands are still bare, which is why a visitor who plans a trip around the ordinary cherry season will arrive to find nothing left on the branches.

The castle is much older than the planting. Nago castle is said to have been the seat of the Nago aji, the local lord who governed here in the early fourteenth century, and the prefecture's tourism site notes a lookout at the top of the climb. This is the only place in Okinawa on the national list of a hundred cherry sites, which puts one winter-flowering hill on a list otherwise built around spring, and makes the list itself run for something close to four months from end to end.