The cherry trees on this hill flower twice a year. Sakurayama Park, in the hills of southwest Gunma, holds about three thousand Somei-yoshino and about seven thousand fuyu-zakura, winter cherries, and Fujioka city gives their seasons separately: the Somei-yoshino from the start of April into the middle of the month, the winter cherries from the middle of November to the middle of December.

A cherry that flowers in both winter and spring is uncommon enough that this stand is designated a national place of scenic beauty and a natural monument. Fuyu-zakura also goes by the name koba-zakura, small-leaf cherry, and is thought to be a cross between yama-zakura and mame-zakura. Nobody planted it to be unusual. It simply is.

The winter flowering does not behave like the spring one. It does not arrive all at once. It starts on the lower branches, a few flowers at a time, and works upward over weeks, so a tree can be in flower at the bottom and bare at the top at once. Once it has started it keeps going for about a month.

That makes it a different thing to visit. In April you get the hanami everyone recognises: three thousand trees on a hillside, done in a week or two. In November and December you get something slower and much quieter. Cold air, a hill largely to yourself, and white opening one branch at a time on trees that ought to be finished for the year. The park is the same, and the name is the same. What you go there for is not.