Cherry blossom lingo: a row of cherry blossom trees

Perhaps the most used cherry blossom term is one that simply describes a row of cherry blossom trees. A row of cherry blossom trees can describe a line of cherry blossoms along a street, or along a promenade or just in a field, that were planted in an orderly fashion for aesthetics.

A row of cherry blossom trees

A line of cherry blossom trees is called a Sakura Namiki 桜並木. Sakura, as I'm sure you know by now, means cherry blossom tree, and namiki means a row of trees. Namiki is also used to refer to a tree-lined street or promenade. The word is also used to describe the rows of trees that form sakura tunnels.Not all sakura namiki are sakura tunnels, in fact most are just one row of trees. But all sakura tunnels are made up of sakura namiki! Some sakura namiki are short, some are really long. Like really long: they can go on for kilometers.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of landscaped rows of cherry blossom trees all around Japan. Every prefecture has some. Some are more famous than others. In my own prefecture of Saitama, beside Tokyo, we have three cherry blossom spots that are listed in the official top 100 places to see cherry blossoms in Japan. One of them, in Kumagaya, is a sakura namiki. Another, Nagatoro Cherry Blossoms, has a sakura namiki in its collection of cherry blossom views.

The row of cherry blossoms in this post was taken this year in Yoshimi, where there is a kilometer long sakura namiki. Actually, there are two of rows, one either side of an embankment, and they create a sakura tunnel too. Have you seen a sakura namiki this year?