Yes, Japan’s most famous sakura spots and species draw big crowds for good reasons, but they’re not all that cherry blossom season has to offer.

Going out to see cherry blossoms is one of the most quintessential Japanese springtime activities, but fighting crowds is also often another. That’s because the blossoms only bloom for a short period of time, and so pretty much the whole country concentrates its visits to the most famous parks and gardens with near-identical timing.

To be fair, Japan’s top cherry blossom venues are still beautiful even when they’re crowded, and you could even argue that the big crowds help contribute to a fun, party-like atmosphere. However, if you’d rather skip the standard touristy places and look for a more personalized experience, Japanese travel portal Jalan is here to help with a list of its top nine off-the-beaten-path sakura spots in the country.

The rankings were compiled from an Internet survey of 1,054 respondents between the ages of 20 and 59, and instead of the most common cherry blossom variety, Somei Yoshino, the list focuses on two other sakura types, yaezakura, whose flowers bloom in thicker double-layered clusters, and shidarezakura, whose branches arch downwards like those of a weeping willow. Note that some of these places aren’t exactly entirely unknown and might have crowds during peak times or on the weekends, but they should all still be less congested than the best-known, more heavily touristed venues in places like Tokyo or Kyoto.

8 (tie). Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park (Tokyo)
Best viewing time: Late March-Early April
Website

That said, even in downtown Tokyo you can find sakura spots that most people don’t know about. Once the estate garden of a samurai lord, the garden-turned-park is just a short walk from Hiroo Station and has a variety of sakura species, including yaezakura, to be found on its hillside grounds.

8 (tie). Oniushi Park (Hokkaido Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Mid-March
Website

Hakodate is the closest major tourist attraction to Oniushi Park, which is located on the opposite coast of the Oshima Peninsula in the town of Mori. This seaside park has roughly 500 cherry blossom trees, and with yaezakura being a later-blooming variety and Hokkaido’s cool weather meaning a later start to sakura season in general, Oniushi is a great option if you’re too busy to travel during the regular peak cherry blossom flowering. Oniushi also boasts yaebenishidare trees, a hybrid weeping yaezakura type.

7. Nagatoro Pass (Saitama Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Mid-late April
Website

Some 500 trees from 31 different varieties of yaezakura form a cherry blossom tunnel in Nagatoro in the Chichibu mountains. Not only are they beautiful to view from below, if you take the ropeway cable car up to the bearby Fudoji Temple, you can admire the pink path from above too.

6. Takebe no Mori Park (Okayama Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Late March-mid-April
Website

Situated in the mountainous northern sector of Okayama City, there are over 100 different types of cherry blossoms to see in this park, which owes part of its creation to Toemon Sano, a botanist known as the “Sakura Protector” for his work with the plants. Sano was the third botanist to take that name and devote his life’s work to cherry blossoms, and though he passed away in 2025, the park, with its tunnel of weeping yaezakura, remains a part of his living legacy.

4 (tie). Yuka no Sato (Tokushima Preecture)
Best viewing time: Late March-early April
Website

Located in the town of Kamiyamacho, Yuka no Sato’s unique walking course winds its way up a terraced hillside lined with 3,000 cherry blossom trees, including 500 shidarezakura. Standing amongst the trees are statues of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, and gazing out on the sakura from above creates a sensation similar to seeing the “sea of clouds” from a mountaintop.

4 (tie). Kakunodate Samurai Residence Street (Akita Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Mid-late April
Website

The town of Kakunodate’s claim to fame is its preserved samurai quarter, and as you might imagine, some of those samurai families had very nice gardens. In particular, the shidarezakura trees shown in the above photo are said to have been brought to Kakunodate from Kyoto as part of the dowry of a noble lady who was marrying into one of the local samurai clans, and seeing these sakura trees and others against the backdrop of the traditional architecture, especially at night, will have you feeling like you’re out for a luxuriously leisurely stroll in the Edo era.

3. Rakuozakura (Fukushima Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Early-mid-April
Website

With yaezakura and shidarezakura being types of cherry trees, you might assume that Rakuozakura is another. Actually, though, the Rakuozakura is a single, specific tree that grows on the grounds of Nanko Shrine, which is itself inside of Nako Park in the town of Shirakawa. How does a single cherry blossom tree get its own name? By being more than 200 years old, and from being so awe-inspiringly majestic in both size and shape.

2. Miho Museum, (Saga Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Early-mid-April
Website

The city of Koka’s Miho Museum contains thousands of paintings, sculptures, and ceramic and lacquerware pieces, but there’s also beauty to be found outside its walls. The museum is perched atop a forested mountain and accessed through a tunnel, and in spring the 100 shiradezakura trees greet you with waves of pink petals as you come out the exit. This one does tend to get crowded with flower viewers on the weekends, so a weekday visit is best if you want to quietly contemplate them, especially when the sakura are bathed in morning light.

1. Nicchu Line Weeping Sakura (Fukushima Prefecture)
Best viewing time: Mid-April
Website

Trains used to run along the Nicchu Line, but once it was shut down this section of the tracks in the town of Kitakata was converted into a pedestrian pathway, and there’s no better time to walk it than in spring. You’ll pass under roughly 1,000 sakura trees along the three-kilometer (1.9-mile) course, and while ordinarily it wouldn’t take more than an hour to cover that distance, it’s hard to imagine a walking course better suited to taking your time to figuratively stop and smell the roses, by looking at the sakura, than this one.

Source: Jalan (1, 2), PR Times
Images: PR Times
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