The circuit round the pond is two kilometres. That is about half an hour at a walking pace. Shobara's tourism site describes Ueno Park as a cherry site centred on Ueno pond, with about six hundred Somei-yoshino around it, peaking around April. Six hundred is not a large number by the standards of the hundred selected sites, and Shobara does not pretend otherwise. Paper lanterns are lit from six in the evening until ten.

Planting round a pond means planting on a closed line rather than an open one.

Wherever you start, you end up back at the same point, and for the whole of the walk there are cherry trees visible on the far side of the water as well as the ones directly overhead.

That double view is the thing here, and it is a consequence of the shape rather than of the number of trees. You are never looking at only the near trees or only the far ones; the two are always in the frame together, one sharp and one soft with distance across the surface. After dark the lanterns come on and both sets appear a second time in the water, so the count of lights on the far bank is doubled by the count of their reflections, and the middle of the pond ends up brighter than the path you are standing on.