Yamazaki River Four Seasons Path

photo by Paul Davidson · CC BY 2.0

About 550 cherry trees along 2.5 km of embankment, one of Japan's hundred selected blossom spots.

The Yamazaki River runs between the houses of Mizuho Ward, and for two and a half kilometres it has cherry trees on both banks. At the end of March the branches close over the water and the embankment becomes a corridor; near Tanabe Park you can go down to the water's edge and look up from below. If you come in any other month you find a tidy embankment, a few benches and nothing else: it is a place that exists two weeks a year.

The Four Seasons Path runs along the Yamazaki River between Ishikawa Bridge and Ochiai Bridge, about 2.5 kilometres, with about 550 cherry trees on the two banks. The cherry trees were planted by the consortium that reorganised the land of Ishikawa, active between 1927 and 1935; the path was built by the municipality in 1977, after residents had asked for a walk that would change with the seasons. The name is not a figure of speech: the route is divided into three stretches named after spring, summer and autumn, and each is planted with trees that flower in that season, from the cherry to the hydrangea to the winter camellia. The flowering stretch is one of the hundred blossom spots selected by the Japanese cherry blossom association, which is a private association and not a state register.

ℹ️ Public embankment, open at all times and free. Between Kanae Bridge and Ishikawa Bridge there are fixed low lights at ground level; on blossom days the area around the small wooden Kanae bridge is lit up in the evening. Near Tanabe Park you can go down to the riverbank. It is only worth going at the end of March and in the first days of April, and nobody publishes the exact dates in advance: Mizuho Ward updates the state of the blossom year by year on its official account. From Mizuho-kuyakusho Station, on the Sakura-dōri Line, it is about 1 km and thirteen minutes on foot to the small Kanae bridge. There are no toilets or cafés along the embankment.

🚉 Mizuho Undojo Higashi · 11 min walk

Sources: city.nagoya.jp

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