The cherries here are late on purpose. Shizumine Furusato Park covers twelve hectares in central Ibaraki and holds two thousand double-flowered cherry trees against two hundred Somei-yoshino, which is the reverse of the usual proportion. Almost everywhere else in Japan, the double kind is a small afterthought planted at the edge of a Somei-yoshino park.

Because the double varieties open later, the season here begins roughly when the rest of the prefecture has finished. The official window is the middle of April to the end of it. People arrive having already had their hanami somewhere else, which changes the mood of the place. It is quieter than a park at peak Somei-yoshino, and less hurried.

The flowers themselves behave differently. More petals means more weight, so the branches hang rather than reach, and the clusters come down to somewhere around eye level. You look into them instead of up at them.

The colour is heavier too, a deep pink rather than the near-white most people picture. From the far side of the park the trees do not read as cherry at all. You have to get close before the shape of the flower tells you what you are looking at, and by then you are standing under branches that are almost touching your head.