The hill came first. Mato Park sits in Masuda, in the south of Yokote, with Mount Mato standing behind it, and the dark green of the pines on that hill is the backdrop to everything else in the park. In front of it there is a pond with an island set into it, and around the water about two thousand cherry trees, Somei-yoshino and yama-zakura among them.

Three colours, then. Pine green behind, water in the middle, cherry white in front of that. From close up they are three separate things at three different distances. From the far side of the pond they line up into bands, and the water in the middle carries a second copy of the white above it.

Yokote city does not publish an average peak for this park. It publishes the dates of the festival and nothing else.

So the timing given here is not the city's. It is worked out from the meteorological agency's thirty-year average for Akita, the nearest station with a published normal, which puts full bloom at the twenty-second of April. Akita is on the coast and this is inland, so treat it as an approximation rather than a promise, and check the year's own reports before travelling. The city posts the festival dates each spring, and those are the firmer number.