Nagatoro flowers twice, about ten days apart, in two places that have almost nothing in common.

The first is Kitazakura-dori, a road that runs two and a half kilometres along the Arakawa from the station to Takasago bridge. Around four hundred trees line it, close enough that the branches meet overhead and make a tunnel of it. Saitama prefecture gives this stretch as early to mid April. It is a road, so you walk it in one direction and come back the same way, and the river is beside you the whole time.

The second is at the foot of Mount Hodo and is called Toriunuke no Sakura, the cherries you pass through. About five hundred trees, more than thirty varieties, all of them double-flowered kinds that open later than Somei-yoshino. The prefecture gives it as mid to late April.

So the town gets a second spring while the first one is still coming down. The town is better known for shooting the rapids on the Arakawa in a flat-bottomed boat, and most of the year the river is the reason people come. For these three weeks it is not. The road is busier than the water, and the hill above it is busier still. Ten days is enough of a gap to be worth planning around.