You do not look up at these. The Omuro cherries stand about two metres high, branching from the base and spreading close to the ground rather than reaching for it, which is how the Kyoto prefectural tourism federation describes them. The flowers arrive at roughly the height of a standing adult's face. The grove is inside the middle gate at Ninnaji, on the western side, and it is walled in by the temple rather than open to a street.

The temple records that the grove was designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty in 1924, which is early for a planting rather than a building.

They are also late, and that matters more than it sounds. Lateness here is the whole design.

By the time the Omuro cherries open, the rest of Kyoto has finished: the river banks are green again, the temples have swept their gravel, and the crowds have gone home believing the season is done. The prefecture's own phrase for this grove is the last sight of the old capital's cherry blossom. Ninnaji adds that they have been the ordinary people's cherry since the Edo period, when this was somewhere townsfolk could go without an invitation. Low, late, and at the very back of the queue.