As the heat of 23°C sweeps across Tokyo, it brings with it a sea of pink and white flowers. Spreading in every direction are sakura, flowers that only bloom for about a week of the year and are so delicately dependent on weather conditions that they could easily vanish in an instant. The problem with cherry blossoms is that they take a while to reach full bloom, and in previous years, 100% hasn’t quite been reached. This year I am fortunate, and the weather has been excellent. Today, the flowers are at their full potential and will stay like this for a few days or until it rains. If it rains, the flowers will wash away, sharing the same fate as a ludicrously named spider in a nursery rhyme.

I head toward the Sumida River, passing rows of flowers that line the river on both sides. The same river, but this week, offering an entirely different setting.

I cross the river and head into Sumida Park. I have arranged to meet my friends for a traditional event known as hanami. I wander the park, passing large groups of people drinking alcohol as they sit shoeless on bright blue tarpaulin. As I traverse the verdant gardens, after a full thirty minutes, I arrive at the location of the first-ever cherry blossom viewing party of the Imperial Court. Just over the hill behind this historic location, sit my friends, drinking whisky at noon.

As I gaze at cherry blossoms and observe the other people here enjoying their little picnics of alcohol and snacks, I realise that a man from Pizza Hut is delivering a hot pizza to one of the groups at the bottom of the hill. I find it astonishing; firstly, how could the delivery man ever find the group that ordered, and secondly, if this were in England, the company would never deliver to a crowded park. They would insist on a postal address, and if that couldn’t be provided, they would simply refuse.

We sit under a cherry blossom tree, mostly in quiet contemplation. The point of hanami is to enjoy the flowers, the alcohol, and the company of others. As I stare at the flowers, I recall a story about horses. In the past, many Buddhists would ask to be buried with sakura, so to shake the branches and release a snowfall of flowers, horses would be tied around a cherry blossom tree. This is actually the reason that raw horse meat in Japan is known as sakura.

Sakura also has a third meaning, a stooge. Many years ago, people would be allowed to view kabuki shows for free, in exchange for over-the-top laughter and applause. These stooges would sit in the audience to encourage the paying members watching the show to participate in applause. It is said that the applause blooms very quickly, spreads, then fades away, much like the flowers. Our party eventually fades away too, just like the flowers, and I take my leave and walk toward Asakusa, to look at some cucumbers.

Within the grounds of Sogenji Temple sit a pair of perfectly preserved kappa. Child of the river and an imaginary animal said to help local people with float control, or so the confusing sign states. It is said that a kappa has a bowl on its head, always full to the brim with water. If the bowl becomes empty, then the kappa sadly dies. Apparently, eating cucumbers rehydrates the kappa, keeping it alive, which might explain the cucumbers. I bow at the kappa statues, hoping to see them bow back, thus spilling their bowls and killing them in the process, but nothing happens. Just a statue covered in cucumber, staring blankly at me. A man cutting the lawn tells me that there are limbs from an actual kappa inside the temple; however, I am not allowed to see them, and am given no explanation as to why not. It makes me wonder why he even mentioned it in the first place. Regardless, I leave the temple with a free cucumber under each arm.

I turn back to cherry blossom viewing once more and head to the overly crowded Ueno Park.

The park has one of the best spots to view flowers in Tokyo, with endless rows of blossoming trees spreading from the middle of the park all the way to the Fountain of Frog. There isn’t much else to do here though; I have seen flowers already and am perhaps losing interest slightly. I instead wander away from the park, in search of something interesting.

Eventually, I stumble into Toeizan Kan’ei-ji Endon-in, a temple that features many graves of famous perished people, including that of a priest named Ryoozenji. The priest had a revelation in a dream, and upon waking, he invented a powerful medicine named Kintaien. This medicine cured every illness in the world, and he sold it at a drugstore that was owned by his nephew. All of the profits from this super drug, Ryoozenji spent on a library in the grounds of this very temple. I find it a little odd. If I had invented a drug that cured every illness in the world, I would have thought my profits would have stretched a lot further than a simple library. Still, the story of Ryoozenji isn’t the strangest thing at Toeizan Kan’ei-ji Endon-in.

Next to the copper bell sits a large stone surrounded by plants. I take a closer look and discover that this rock is a tomb that contains the souls of insects. Specifically, insects that were sketched by a lord in the Edo Period. This type of monument is known as a Mushizuka and was built to console the spirits of various insects that were both drawn and used for science.

I leave the temple and return to Ueno Park. Most of the people in the park are gathered for hanami, but there is one area where the crowd seems to be oblivious to the beauty all around them, engaged in a protest of sorts. A man stands with a book and a microphone, shouting loudly and with anger, as fifty elderly Japanese men sit and watch in awe, nodding in agreement. I am not sure what the man is so angry about, perhaps the flowers, but regardless, he does his protest next to a sign that ironically says, “No protesting, no gathering, no advertising, and no politics.”

I leave the park with a head full of cucumbers. As I wander down flower-covered roads, I turn onto Kappabashi Street, in the hope that I might meet an actual kappa. Obviously, nothing transpires, so my float control dilemma will have to wait until another day.