Two turrets and no keep. Akashi Park covers about 54.8 hectares, and standing on the earthworks are the Tatsumi and Hitsuji-saru turrets of Akashi castle, both designated Important Cultural Properties. The main tower was never rebuilt and there is nothing standing where it was. The cherry trees flower between the two survivors.

The city names three kinds among them: Somei-yoshino, Shokawa-zakura and weeping cherry.

Shokawa-zakura is the unexpected one on that list. It is not a variety you meet often this far west, and its presence suggests somebody made a deliberate choice at some point.

The rest of the park is not really about blossom at all. There is a pond, Go-no-ike, with a boat house on it, and there are baseball grounds and an athletics track and tennis courts inside the same boundary. It is a public sports park that happens to contain a castle and a thousand-odd trees, and most of the people crossing it in April are on their way to something else entirely, which gives the blossom a background of ordinary municipal life rather than reverence. The timing given on this page is not the city's; it comes from the weather record for Kobe.