The pond is named after pine trees. Takamatsu-no-ike was a hawking ground of the Nanbu lords, and the city's account says it took its name from the beauty of the pine wood around it. The pines are still there. So, now, are about eight hundred cherry trees of several kinds, planted around the water in a park of a little over forty-five hectares.

The flowering runs from the end of April into the first days of May, which is late by the standards of anywhere south of here. Morioka is one of the last large cities on the main line to come into flower, and people travel north for it after their own has finished.

The other thing about this pond is the swans. They arrive for the winter, more than six hundred of them at the January peak, and they stay until roughly May.

Which means the two things overlap. In the last week of April there are still birds on the water, the ones in no hurry to leave, while the trees above them are at their fullest. It is not a combination anyone arranged. A pond named for its pines, cherry trees planted much later around the edge of it, and a few hundred swans that have not yet gone north. You get all three at once for about a fortnight.