Five hundred trees on the side of a mountain, above a city of a quarter of a million. Seibu Park sits partway up Bizan, the hill on the western edge of Tokushima, and the city gives about five hundred cherry trees there with a peak from late March into the first days of April.

There are others nearby, and the city has counted those as well.

Chuo Park in the centre of town has around two hundred and fifty. Bizan Park has three hundred at the summit, and twelve hundred more stand on Otakiyama, further along the same slope.

All four flower at roughly the same time, which turns hanami in Tokushima into a question of choosing where to go rather than working out when. If you want numbers, Otakiyama has them. If you want to walk there from the station, Chuo Park is the answer. Seibu Park's argument is the view. It sits high enough on the hillside to look out over the city and the river below while you are standing under the blossom. Only one of the four made the list of a hundred, and it is presumably the view that did it. Lighting runs from six until ten in the evening, on all four of them. The trees at Seibu are Somei-yoshino and weeping cherry, as the city's own listing records.