Early Cherry Blossoms in Atami.

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Recently, we went to Atami, in Shizuoka, Japan. Atami is a hub for people going to Izu, its a hot spring area, a port, a bullet train stop, and recently an Instagram hotspot too, so its generally pretty crowded. The city is built up on the side of mountains that run along the coast. There are a number of cherry blossom spots in the area. We went to two of them.

The first was a park along the coast a little from the city. The area is called Kamitaga and if you reach the Seaside park coming from Atami, turn up into the hills, look carefully and you will see the cherry trees in early February.

When you get there, you can walk along a path which runs along the hill, with a view over the sea and many cherry trees along the route, there's also a viewpoint slightly higher with a rooved seating area.

As a blossom viewing place, its not the most spectacular in Atami, that would be Atami plum blossom Garden, but for cherry trees its fine and always relatively quiet.

After that, we went into central Atami to see the cherry blossoms along the Itogawa River. One of the bridges across the river is called Sakurabashi and it is the main area of the cherry trees. Its a small river and in a local area of Atami with no cars about. It was quite busy that day, but the blossoms were at their best.

You could really spend the whole day in Atami looking at the blossoms in early February. There are the two places we went, add to that the crowded plum blossom park, and some smaller places like Nagisa Park, or larger places like ACAO Forest, although that is a bit pricey, just to go for the cherry blossoms.

Atami is only 45 minutes from Tokyo by the bullet train, making it convenient as well as pretty in early spring, if a little crowded.

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