Every year I search for a new place to visit for what s possibly the highlight of the year in Japan, the Cherry Blossoms bloom. Hanami Walker Plus is a site which lists the top sites across regions and for the year 2024, Gongendo Park located in Satte city of Saitama prefecture made it to the top.
The city is around 60 kilometres from Tokyo and a 90 minute drive in the weekend traffic. We left at a reasonable hour in the morning, 08:30 and that turned out to be the biggest mistake. The weekend of April 6th was when the bloom was at it’s peak and as expected the crowds were large.
As we exited the Chuo Jidosha Doro at the Satte City exit, the traffic seemed to be light and we had hope of finding parking. But as we neared the park traffic started to build up. The Hanami Walker Plus website mentioned parking for around 1,000 cars, but the parking lost 1-3 were already full and closed when we passed them. Parking Lot 4 was also full but cars were lining up outside the road.
As we inched closer to the parking , the cars behind us started increasing and started blocking the traffic. As we inched to the lead spot in the line, each car departing in 15-20 minute intervals, a middle aged lady , clearly incensed walked up to us and asked why were were parked her. There would have been close to 30 cars behind us and the reason for waiting was obvious, when I replied to her , she asked why we couldn’t wait inside the car park. When I replied back to her silly question, in a condensing tone, saying that would block the cars from exiting the parking area she walked back in a huff.
It took another 30 minutes for the next car to leave and after waiting close to 2 hours we finally found parking. The wait, it turned out ,was worth it.
The Gongendo Park has around 1,000 Cherry Blossom trees of the Yoshino variety. The trees are lined on the banks of the Gongendo river and stretch over 1 kilometre. There are rape seed flowers surrounding the trees and provide a beautiful contrast when the flowers are at full bloom. The pink cherry blossoms, the yellow rape seed flowers and the green grass make it a beautiful palette for the visitors and and a splendid location for the shutterbugs.
Our parking spot was located on the far bank of the river, so we crossed the bridge to get to the spot where the trees are concentrated. Food stalls lined up on the banks, people sat under the cherry blossom trees, eating and drinking, a party like atmosphere prevailed.
The Gonegendo Park is the Park no 4 in the area and from our car park we walked across the Manyo Park 万葉公園, crossed the Sotono bridge 外野橋 and to reach the Rape Seed Flower fields, then climbed the embankment to the Cherry Blossom Trees. There were food stalls behind the embankment serving holiday food, Fried chicken, buttered potatoes, Soba noodles and ice ream.
There were the lucky few, arriving early and reserving their spots, who were sitting beneath the cherry blossom trees and have the traditional Hanami 花見 parties. Partying at the park is definitely a big attraction, however taking pictures of the cherry blossoms as a backdrop against the rape seed flowers is an even bigger attraction.
So the shutterbugs, few with professional cameras and the remaining ones on their roamed around, stopping at vantage viewpoints and taking pictures , selfies alone or with partners and most often taking pictures of each other.
It takes around an hour to walk around and take pictures and by the time we headed back the fountain on the Gongendo river had opened up, shooting up spouts of water rhythmically.
It was early afternoon as we walked back to the car park, cars were lined up on the road, waiting patiently and we drove out opening up a place for the next car to park!
