Japan and Tokyo's Cherry Blossom Forecast 2026 Final

00:00:02 John Daub: Welcome to the beautiful riverside of the Sumida River. You can see a sakura tree right behind me and all around me. Actually, I'm in the midst of the some Yoshino trees, which are, I guess, late bloomers. If you compare them to where I was just three weeks ago in Shizuoka Prefecture on Izu Peninsula, there's a town with Kawazuzakura, which there's still some still blooming there. But those are February blooming cherry blossoms. These are, well, you know, end of March blooming cherry blossoms.

00:00:35 John Daub: And it is now the 15th of March. And the final schedule for the cherry blossoms is out. Check this out here. So what we have is an increase in the blossoming. It's going to be earlier than it was predicted, of course, in the first several iterations of these forecasts. Now, on the 19th is Tokyo's forecasted day. And you know what? That's just four days away. And I'm. I want to show you. It doesn't look like it, does it? We're going to find out.

00:01:06 John Daub: We're going to see at my local one of the trees that I always come to and kind of explain about this forecast, what this all means, because it is really important to understand it if you're planning a trip around it here. All right. If you look at the cherry blossom tree, you're having a hard time finding any blossoms or buds. There's a Tokyo sky tree right there. This is a live picture. Welcome back. I just did a live stream just a little bit ago talking about my son's birthday.

00:01:39 John Daub: And this is a completely other one. A space boat. Hey now. Makes its way one of the great boats along the Sumida River. This is an actual bus, Suijo bus, they call it, which takes you from one spot to the other of the city. Kind of looks like it's from outer space. Let me get. Get past this. Cherry blossoms, trees. That's the hoteluna, is it? Beautiful. Big windows. You really get to absorb the city of Tokyo on those boats. And does look like it's from space, doesn't it?

00:02:11 John Daub: Kind of does. Right? It's going towards Asakusa in that direction, towards the sky tree. So I can't see Myanai in there. I don't see it. Oh, there's one. I can just see it. Let's look. Do you see it? Right there. There's some green. Okay. I gotta move back to get this in focus. How do I get. If I get this branch in focus. There you go. You should see the green. It's hard to do it. You see, there's some green right there. So I think we're. I don't know, maybe it's just this tree in particular.

00:02:45 John Daub: One thing you don't do, don't shake the trees. You can, maybe you could touch it, but don't shake it. Right. I. This is green right here. So the buds are finally out. So that means they're breaking through that dormant stage and they are on the way. This is really good news. See if I can. If I put my hand there, maybe it'll focus better. There you go. You can see the greenness, greenness of that right there. Those are popping out. Those are.

00:03:15 John Daub: That's. That's cherry blossom. So they'll come out here probably, I would say 96 hours for this particular tree before we start to see green all over it and the little buds. And then we might have one blossom in 96 hours. That's a 24, 48, four days from now. So actually the schedule is probably not too far off. Once you start seeing green buds on it, that means it's about four or five days away from the first one coming out. But the, the thing with the 19th, with this prediction, it is.

00:03:48 John Daub: Is somewhat deceptive. The 19th is when the first blossoms start to come out. Maybe you get like one or two on the indicator tree, which is at Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo. Kudanshita is the subway station. You can, you can get off there and take a look at it. Oh, it's so beautiful. That area inside there, the indicator tree. I think it's like once there's like eight or nine blossoms. They officially say that the cherry blossom season is, is starting.

00:04:19 John Daub: And Tokyo is one of the first places where the cherry blossom start because it is kind of warm. I think it has to do with the urban warmth of the, of the asphalt all around. The glass reflecting onto the from all the skyscraper buildings. The glass reflecting onto some of those trees makes an impact, I think as well. And you see the rest of the country, the cherry blossoms, when we say that we're talking about the some Yoshino variety, they bloom at different times depending on the location and the weather and the temperature.

00:04:55 John Daub: Aomori up in the north, you can see that the purple, the darker pink, that's going to be a lot later, including all the way up to May. The blossoms will be blooming in the north, in Hokkaido, but if you look down in the south, you get, you get Tokyo and Nagoya and Izu in Shizuoka, they're going to be the And Kochi down there and Shizuoka and Fukuoka, all kind of on the same line. You notice Tokyo to Fukuoka is not south, but west, actually. So we'd say west Japan over there. Not. Not south, southwest Japan. It's west Japan. Osaka is more west of Tokyo than it is south, which surprises some people. But they're going to be coming out on the 20th. So that looks like it's just five. Just five days away. But as you just saw, I'm showing you a tree. It looks like it could be a little bit more than that, but that's when it starts. So that means the peak of it is probably going to be around the 25th or 26th. So 10 days from now, and then Sendai on the 30th, and then Aomori up on, like April 20th, I would say.

00:06:04 John Daub: Let me. Let me pull up this. This one here. This is a better indicator. This is the flowering meter. Oh, Japan has a flower meter. I love it. You have Tokyo, the third one down. That means that the breaking of the dormancy there, it's 82% broken out of dormancy. So it's really close to flowering. It depends. These trees maybe don't get as much sunshine as some of the other ones, so perhaps they're just starting to break out. You can see, I think this particular tree I showed you is about, I don't know, 10% broken out. I may. It'll probably increase very rapidly from now. But right now in Tokyo, 82% is the flower meter into the into the budding region. Once we get to the flowering, it's almost like a race. Doesn't it look like that? Look at Nagoya. Five down, that's 87. So it's a little bit ahead of Tokyo right now in the flower meter and the growth stage. You know who's catching up real fast? Fukuoka, just on the tails of Tokyo, and Sendai, is much further behind it, as well as Sapporo, because they're much colder places.

00:07:14 John Daub: But it looks like we're just days away. And this schedule came out on March 12, 2026. So once we get to the flowering, once we hit that line that says flowering, that's the start, meaning we're just going to get some some blossoms, like one or two popping out. It's going to take a few days after that before they all start coming out like popcorn. And then the full bloom, once it hits that, the middle line there or the end line, that's full bloom, and then it's all downhill. That's when that one wind and one rain will wash them all away. It's funny that Japan has a flower meter. This is the first time I've seen this. I don't know if they did this last year. The flower meter again, a very good way to look at it as you're seeing a live image of the cherry blossom trees on the Sumita river here. Yeah, there's some green there. Do you guys see it? There's some green. There you go. So maybe it is. This is closer to the water. So this is going to be a little bit warmer down there maybe. So we're close. We're very close. Let's look at the schedule for the rest of the country, shall we, While we're looking at these blossoms here. Forecast for the flowering date, that's when the first blossoms come out. And is Sapporo, April 25th. So that's like more than a month away. So if you say I'm gonna miss the cherry blossom as well, you only have to go up to Hokkaido, Tokyo on the 19th.

00:08:48 John Daub: It's five days earlier than before. So that's actually interesting. Right? Forecasted bloom was 327 because it was cold for a while. So that's four days earlier. And the flowering average date for Tokyo is the 24th. So we're five days faster than the average in Tokyo. So earlier than normal. But hey, there are some places that are right on time. Like Wakayama is exactly on the on the spot and Kagoshima is actually one day late. So before everybody starts talking about all the flowers blooming early because of, you know, climate change and global warming, that's not completely reflected here. Sapporo is going to be eight days earlier, but it's too early to tell. A lot of stuff can happen. Another cold spell can come in and keep it dormant for a little bit longer. So it's an interesting way to look at it. But I never think that the cherry blossoms are much of an indicator into it because some years they come out really late. 2024, I think, ruined a lot of people's experiences because the blossoms came out two weeks later. I'm not joking.

00:09:58 John Daub: It was two weeks later than normal. It's been down. It's cool down in Kyushu. Yeah, we had some snow recently. Let's. Let's walk around just a little bit here. We had some snow recently in certain areas. And yesterday in Ibaraki by Mount Scuba, we had snow on the ground in some spots. So I mean, let's just say it's cold out in the countryside. Tokyo is an outlier I don't need a jacket today. It's quite nice. But I'm looking here at the trees and you don't.

00:10:30 John Daub: There's no blossoms yet. It's just very. It still feels kind of like winter, despite the sunshine. Let's take you to the point here. We'll look back. These trees, they're in the shadow of these apartment buildings, I think. So as the sun goes behind there, they don't get as much sun. So it's worth taking a look. Going around here, the parts that are in the sunshine, more will be blooming. So it looks like depending on how much sunshine or how much reflection the tree gets will determine whether or not it's going to be blooming.

00:11:06 John Daub: Just three weeks ago. Let me just bring this one up here real quickly. I was here, the town of Kawazu. It's not a big place, but we're here in Shizoka Prefecture on. So you can see this video. This is on the YouTube. You can see it's a pink variety of the cherry blossom. This is the one. That's right. Cobra Bebop. This is the cherry blossom. That's actually the emoji on your iPhone. This particular pink one here is the Kawazu Zakura. This came out three weeks ago.

00:11:37 John Daub: It was in full bloom in the city of Shizuoka. So you only have to travel a couple of hours from Tokyo in February, around the 20th of February every year. That's when they hit the peak bloom. And it's. It's that pink color that's so spectacular. You don't have as many of these in Tokyo. It's mostly some Yoshino, the white blossoms, but the. You can take a look at this episode on the channel, which is very good. And this is last year. No, actually, hold on a second.

00:12:09 John Daub: Back up. This is three years ago. Three years ago, Leo's first cherry blossom season. I walked outside and looked at the trees. This is the same park. There's Leo. He's like just a baby. And this is his first outdoor cherry blossom. Because he was in the hospital when he was born. Couldn't go out to see it. Look at his hair. That's funny. He was more interested in the pigeons than he was the cherry blossoms. I can understand that it's a lot of pigeons, but this is the.

00:12:41 John Daub: Some Yoshino variety. And. Yeah, that's white. It's beautiful. It looks like snow. I think that the reason why the Somi Ashina looks really impressive is because it does have that snow look to it. And it's warm outside. So when it's got a canopy of these white flowers it just looks more surreal than the pink ones. The pink ones look like flowers. The white ones can give it almost a surreal feeling. Like it's almost like a snow. And so you see a bunch of them in this area.

00:13:13 John Daub: The some Yoshino variety. That's right. Toby's minions there. You do have other things blooming now. Spring is here. It well on the calendar we still got a little ways to go. But you see along the riverside a lot of flowers. Look at this. I just noticed this look at in the grass here. They just cut it a few days ago and you can see these flowers are starting to bloom all over the grass. I guess somebody planted seeds or something in here. I don't know.

00:13:44 John Daub: This is a little bit unusual but they've got these purple flowers blooming in the grass on the banks of the Sumida River. It's beautiful, isn't it? Look at that. This is Tokyo. It is not like any other major metropolis. It is very much a special place. And those that live here or stayed here they know that Leo is just a baby. Carry Jonathan. Do not say his name three times and summon him. That would be bad. There's Eitaibashi. That's one of the bridges made in the 1920s I believe from a treaty where Japan stopped using the steel for battleships and turned it into infrastructure.

00:14:23 John Daub: So that's a battleship steel bridge over there. There's a couple of them you see in the distance as you make your way down the Sumida River. And I love this spot. Cobra Biba. Be careful. Look what you're doing. I love this spot, this point here because you got the. This goes towards Toyosu and this will go towards Tokyo Bay. And if you go this way it takes you around before you get back to Tokyo Bay. Just around the islands. This is a man made island that I'm actually.

00:14:55 John Daub: This is an original island but the. That's been built out with man made islands. Chuo Blue bridge right there. That'll take you in this direction straight to Tokyo Station in about, I don't know, 20 minutes walking I think Toby is not behind me because I've got. I'm looking. He's not there. I just looked. Don't try and jinx the stream. What happens is the signal goes down because Toby messes around with the cell phone towers. That's the legend of Toby.

00:15:26 John Daub: I've explained it a few times. It goes back to the start of this channel where I was in Noboribetsu. And I was feeding bears in a cement trap in Noboribetsu. There's a bear park there. Not the greatest place, but I bought some salmon and I threw pieces of it down to the bears down in the In the cement pit that they worked, that they were living in. And every time I did it, a crow with great agility swooped down and grabbed the salmon in midair from the bears.

00:15:57 John Daub: And there was one crow in particular that I named Toby. The story does not end there. It just starts there. Along my trip, there was a troll. He's actually a nice guy because I ended up meeting him and doing a live stream with him. But he kept on, you know, saying, do this, do this. It's a live stream, so I can tell you what to do. And I called him Toby. I know. I think his name was Toby. No, wait, I have this story backwards. Hold on a second.

00:16:28 John Daub: Processing. Processing. Okay, complete. All right, this. This troll named Toby was first. This is around Akita. Akita. He was doing this or somewhere around there. And I was having trouble finding a ride. And Toby just. That's how we got the name Toby. This awful troll started telling me what to do and acting nasty online and stuff. And, you know, he's B.N. toby. You know, just being himself. Toby. And that name stuck in my head. And those crows, those crows that were stealing the salmon, they were named Toby after him.

00:17:03 John Daub: And from that time, every time we see crows or something bad, something evil, something nasty in the city of Tokyo, some animal doing something particular. Crows, actually, any crow. We just call him Toby because he's everywhere. He's a minion. They live. Actually, the pigeons are the minions. They all work together. It's an infrastructural thing, a hierarchy. And started in 2017, and it's lived on for almost. Can you believe it? 10 years. I gotta get Toby back.

00:17:35 John Daub: He was just a young man. He was just a nice guy, you know, in person. It's amazing when you meet the people in person, how different that they are, how. Than their personality on the Internets. It's just nasty. It's a nasty, dirty place. But we have a community that will keep you in check, so. That's right. Two streams in one day. Yeah. This is part of my master plan, actually. I wanted to show you about the. I could show you some of these clips now.

00:18:05 John Daub: I wanted to show you my experience with Reza. Reza is a Is a YouTube creator from Dubai who is visiting in Japan. I think he's still around. Let me see. I'm gonna bring a couple of these streams in here. It's gonna. I'm just going to pull all these in here. Oh, here we go. Okay. Boom. All right. So we went first. I rented a car and I drove them out here. And this was the service area. These Moriya service area in Ibaraki. These are chicken grilled chicken karepan with cheese inside and then a piece of cheese on the top.

00:18:41 John Daub: Is that not the most amazing thing? So we were obsessed with this, and we were almost late for our lunch. Our lunch was at a restaurant that I'd filmed before. This is Hitachino on the base of Mount Tsukuba. And of course, the manager, Onisawa san, somebody I've met a few times, and we've eaten at his restaurant, allowed us to go into the kitchen and just get a shot of that beautiful marbling from the wagyu beef. It really is a beautiful thing here.

00:19:11 John Daub: I can pull it up. There it is. That was our lunch. This is one of it. Is that Chateaubrillon or is that filet mignon? I don't know what the difference is, but it's a pretty nice cut of beef there. And we barbecued. Barbecued it there. He uses the. Onisawa san's restaurant uses sumiyaki, which is charcoal. Right. So the thing with charcoal for yakiniku is that it is extraordinarily uneven. So it gets hot and you can burn the meat real quick. So you have to be very careful with it.

00:19:44 John Daub: So we get two cuts. That's. I think it was like 250 grams of meat or something like that all together. It was a lot of meat for. For three people. I usually don't eat more than 80, 80 or 80 to 100 grams of wagyu because it's just really rich. But I was really grateful that he let us into the kitchen. Here's Reza Feed Kiani is his. Is his YouTube handle. He's one of the most. He's so talented with food. I think Mark Wiens and. And Trevor, the food ranger have been on his show and he knew a lot of the people that had come to Japan.

00:20:20 John Daub: Here he is. He's just so passionate about the food. I love it. Food brings people together. So the whole car trip, we're just talking about food and he's talking about Dubai as well. And we had a great time. The food was so good. Let's see. Here it is cooking on the. On the grill. Look at that. A 5 wagyu beef. Oh, my goodness. You. You might think that the oil from it is too much. It's not, it's. It's. It's very. There I am. It's very, very well balanced.

00:20:51 John Daub: But I do prefer the A4. Now I know a lot of people at Hitachi, the Hitachi Beef Wagyu beef group. Very nice. They let. They let me into the processing plant and gave raise a chance to look in there. I've already filmed this episode so I think it's really important to learn about where your meat has come from. And here I am inside there. I got a chance to. They explained to me but actually I knew all this stuff here. So he's showing here the logos on the.

00:21:22 John Daub: On the meat and what they represent. That's a five carcass. That was a. I think it was 190 kilograms. That's kind of a lot of. I think that's all that. That episode goes. It kind of disappears. That's a lot of beef here. And then I took them to the farm and I know like some people might say this is controversial but I look, I like to go and see what the conditions are. And I noticed that they took out the nose rings which reduces stress on the, on the cattle.

00:21:53 John Daub: I thought that was really great. They stopped doing nose rings about two years ago and now they do the ropes around. Around to lead them rather than a nose ring. And I thought that that was really good. So good on the industry for doing that and just continuously making changes. But I love the cattle. I love. I would be an awful farmer because I try to. I give them massages and, and I don't mind if they lick me. They have big tongues. Cows are food but they're still animals too.

00:22:26 John Daub: So I have a different point of view as everybody else. Oh, here's me and Reza. Reza's got nice hair. He's got very nice hair. The funniest. This is the funniest thing. They let us go in the, in the freezers and look at him. He's like really passionate. Look at this. Wagyu burgers that they have here. They had filet mignon and all these and sirloin and ribeye cuts in here. And we're just like kids in a. Kids at Christmas looking at the. Look at the intense marbling on that thing.

00:22:59 John Daub: It's crazy. And then they can be in here for. They usually will age them for about a month. These are 35 dollar filet mignon steaks. It's crazy. But look, the cattle have these 10 digit numbers. If you ever want to. Yeah. The Japanese John Wagyu would be super tender. They are tender. Kerry, I know you. They're very, very kind creatures. I know it sounds unusual, but this is my philosophy on life because I've known a lot of farmers, look, they have a finite amount of time on planet Earth.

00:23:32 John Daub: They might as well live as well as they possibly can. So I like to give them massages right here. They like it right here. And they're very shy. So if you can make, I don't want to say make friends, but if you can connect with them, you look into their eyes and the cattle have the most kindest eyes because they are just so stress free. They live a life of just tenderness. And they, it was funny because after I'd scratched one, they got jealous and they all were like lining up to take turns to get a little massage.

00:24:07 John Daub: And then when I walked further down there, they all followed me. Like I felt like I was like Johnny Appleseed or the Pipe Pied, Pied Piper or something. And Hashimoto's on the ranchers kind of smiling. So I kind of became the leader of the cattle. But they were, I think they were 10 months. So they have another over a year to go before they end up becoming food. But I, I always think, you know, if we have a finite amount of time, you better, better try to enjoy it and respect the, the food.

00:24:40 John Daub: Yeah, they're very, they're like little dogs. They like being patted. That's just my approach. You can, you can treat them as food, but I'm still going to eat them. But I, I, I think that you should be nice to the cattle and be nice to the food. And I thought Hashimoto san runs a really good ranch. Food is food, right? Farmers know this stuff here. And here's Japan's philosophy on this. It's not just about making money because it is too. If you treat the cattle with a lot of respect and care, they produce more delicious beef which can be sold at a higher price.

00:25:19 John Daub: Better marbling and it comes back to the industry. That's why Japan's. You're looking at a live view of the cherry blossoms as a boat goes by in the background here. That's why the Japanese Wagyu is as good as it is because they really care for the cattle and do a good job with it. People in the industry. Sun's out now. You see the blue sky. It was, it was cloudy this morning a little bit. It's nice and warm. All right. If you have any questions about the cherry blossom, you can leave in the comments below.

00:25:53 John Daub: My favorite spot in Tokyo, just. I don't like the Meguro River. I know everybody likes to go there. It's just too crowded. You have to go in the morning. So if you're gonna start your day. If you come in to Tokyo for cherry blossoms, I would start in the morning and go to Megura before everybody gets there. Like before 8am and then after 8:30 you could stay for the festivities. It's just stressful. It gets too crowded. It's like shoulder to shoulder.

00:26:24 John Daub: Especially at night. There are better places to go then go out. Where else could you go? You can go to the backside of Shibuya Station. There's a steep road that is really beautiful that I would recommend. Yoyogi park, if you just like to drink. I don't think it's a particularly special place. The riverside, if you keep going up the river here to Asakusa, along the park there, across from the Tokyo Skytree is really nice. There's a Tali's Coffee and a couple of other cafes along the riverbanks.

00:26:58 John Daub: I would recommend that there's a couple of other parks that are great. This. This is great here. This is Scuda island. And on the other side they have cherry blossoms going up and down as well as on the other side. On the other side of the bridge. These are all cherry blossoms here. So this is really beautiful and more local. So it feels like this is more of a Japan experience, more residential, I think. And it's about, as I said, about a 20 minute walk from Tokyo Station and Ginza.

00:27:30 John Daub: Ueno is nice, but I think it's more of like a city view. You get to see some of the culture there. But I don't know, it's really crowded. Ueno can be really crowded. If you do spend some time there, you won't regret it. I'm sure you're gonna have a really good time. But for me it's about coming to a place where there's nobody and then sitting under the tree with your family and just kind of making a day out of it. Not so much going there to drink and party, but just try to enjoy the cherry blossoms.

00:28:05 John Daub: Sakura. It's more of a connection to nature, which is why I don't think Tokyo is the best spot. You want to go out and go out to the countryside, which is why Kawazu was so good. This is why Kawazu was so good. Check out this live stream I did. Kwazu is so good because it's out into the countryside and you have that hospitality. People are a lot friendlier, they're curious. A lot of people ask me, where are you from? So I got that going outside of Tokyo.

00:28:35 John Daub: If you're coming in April 20th, around that time, make sure you go up to the Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture. It's about three hours, three and a half hours from Tokyo. To get there. That is the, I think the best cherry blossom festival. I love Hirosaki. I've been to that festival maybe four or five times in my life. Heck, I should go this year too. Just jump on the Shinkansen. It's hard to get accommodations, but it's possible. But Kawazu is a beautiful.

00:29:06 John Daub: You just want to be within the countryside where the blossoms are. And then when they do start blooming, oh my lord, the country just goes on fire. And yeah, Kawazu is a secret place. Not a lot of tourists know about it. Actually, they think it's too early for the blossoms. That's not the case. So this is when the blossoms start blooming in about, I don't know, a week from now. And I'll bring you again. I'll probably start going around a couple of the spots and share with you because I like to go for myself and share with you.

00:29:42 John Daub: I might not do it live because the signal's not good. The signal's not good. But I'll might do the picture in picture. People seem to like that. Where I was, I'm just looking at the blossoms and I can try some of the food and. And maybe we'll make it an experience where I upload the video on this channel. Because we can see it in beautiful 4k instead of, you know, HD. Alright guys, so that's where we are right now. We're still about a week away.

00:30:12 John Daub: There's a cherry blossom tree right there next to the light. We're about a week away. We got some buds on there. It's starting to break out of the dormancy and we're about, yeah, five days before the first blossom comes. And then it's going to be another week before we hit full bloom. So probably another 12 days before we have full bloom. That's my guess. Thanks everybody. See you in the next live stream probably tomorrow as I take you to another area of Tokyo and talk about this beautiful country, which I call home, Japan.