Cherry blossom lingo: a raft of cherry blossoms

Today I have been introducing some of my favorite Japanese terms used during the cherry blossom season. I've already introduced my absolute favorite "hanafubuki". But the saying for a raft of cherry blossoms is a close second. Moreover, I love seeing a raft of cherry blossoms. You can see these rafts as the blooming period is ending. They are created by "hanafubuki"...

A raft of cherry blossoms

As explained in the last post, "hanafubuki" is the word for sakura petals blowing in the wind. When they land on ground, they create a carpet of cherry blossom petals. But when they land on a mass of water, they create what is called a cherry blossom raft, because they look like a raft made out of cherry blossom petals. In Japanese it is called hanaikada 花筏. Hana means flower and ikada is a raft. So the literal translation is actually a flower raft rather than a cherry blossom raft.

The best place to see flower rafts is generally on rivers. You can see them on ponds and lakes too. Puddles filled with sakura petals are also beautiful, but I am not sure they are called hanaikada! As above, you can usually see these rafts when the trees are shedding their petals. Sometimes that happens slowly over a few days, so the second or third day is usually when you can see a build up of the petals. But if there has been windy weather, it can speed up the formation of the rafts of sakura petals.

The photo of the hanaikada in this post was taken on Wednesday. It was a little early as the trees had only just started to shed and it wasn't all of them, just a small percentage.  It still looked beautiful. Actually I quite liked that there was a full, fluffy cherry blossom tree in the view too. Have you seen an hanaikada this year?