You can get the keep and the blossom in the same photograph, which is the reason most people come. The cherry trees at Odawara stand in the baileys below the tower, and the castle's own flower calendar is precise about them: Somei-yoshino from the end of March into the middle of April, weeping cherry from late March into early April, oshima-zakura in the first days of April.

At the early end there is kawazu-zakura, which opens in the first days of February, so the castle's flowering year begins two months before anyone says the word hanami.

What is interesting about the calendar is that it does not stop at cherry blossom. Wisteria takes over from the middle of April. Azaleas follow that. Irises and hydrangeas come at the end of May, lotus through the middle of summer, red spider lilies in September. Plums and wintersweet cover the cold months at the other end.

The stonework and the moat do not change. Only what is flowering in front of them does, and the castle has arranged its year so that anyone who comes for the cherry trees leaves with a reason to come back in six weeks. That is a deliberate piece of work by whoever plants the grounds, and it is easy to miss while you are lining up the keep behind the branches.