The trees face each other across the water. Between Ishikawa bridge and Ochiai bridge, a stretch of about two and a half kilometres, Nagoya's tourism site counts around six hundred cherry trees along both banks of the Yamazaki river. Its own hanami feature page says five hundred and fifty, so the counting is not settled. The flowering runs from late March into the first days of April.

The river is not wide, and the branches from the two banks come close together above the water, so the avenue reads as one thing rather than two.

What makes this different from a park is that it runs through a residential district. Step off the embankment and you are immediately in an ordinary neighbourhood of houses and small shops, with no gate or ticket booth between the two.

The path along the water is a route to school and to the supermarket for the rest of the year, and for about ten days a year it is one of the best-known cherry avenues in the country. Nothing has been enclosed or gated for the purpose. The crowds are real, but a good proportion of the people on the bank live within a few streets of it and are simply walking home the way they always do.