Carp streamers are washed in this river, under the cherry trees. The Gojo river runs about seven and a half kilometres through Iwakura, and the city counts some thirteen hundred cherry trees along its banks. During the festival there are floats through the streets, lights in the trees after dark, and a demonstration of nonbori-arai.

Nonbori-arai is the work of rinsing the paste out of newly dyed carp streamers in running water, which has to be done in a river and cannot be done anywhere else.

It is a trade, not a performance. It is done here because this is a river that people have always used for it, and the demonstration during the festival is the same work done where the crowd can see it.

Which makes the place different from most of the famous cherry sites, where the water is ornamental and the planting came first. Here the river was working before the trees arrived, and it is still working now. Someone stands in it in waders, handling several metres of wet cloth, while a few hundred people watch from the bank with the blossom over their heads. Two things are going on at once, and only one of them is seasonal. The timing given on this page is not the city's; it comes from the weather record for Nagoya.