Many people think that they have to wait until well into the spring season to participate in a photo tour in Japan and enjoy cherry blossoms, but your Blain Harasymiw photography workshop guide can introduce you to the earliest cherry blossoms in Japan.

Kawazu City, Shizuoka’s Cherry Blossoms are commonly the earliest blooming sakura in Japan, and they don’t flutter away in the winds in one week’s time; they have been known to bloom for photo ops for nearly an entire month.  Another feature that distinguishes Kawazu cherry blossoms from others is the richness of their pink petals.  The luxurious pink petals are also larger than the cherry blossoms that bloom during the normal cherry blossom viewing, or hanami, in Japan.  The blossoms are practically begging to be part of a Japan photo tour and your camera.

The city boasts over 8,000 sakura trees for visiting photographers to enjoy, and I or another Blain Harasymiw photo tour leader will take you to most beautiful and breathtaking stretch of the Kawazu River to enjoy the most photogenic of all the blossoms.  The photographic texture does not end with Sakura; Kawazu’s riverbanks are also home to the glittering yellow canola flowers, so you can capture the contrast of the lustrous pink and the bright yellow. If you are a birder, you will defiantly want to hire Blain Harasymiw as your photography workshop leader, to guide and instruct you on photographing the Mejiro Japanese White Eye as they gorge on the nursing nectar of the Cherry Blossom.

You can also enjoy the traditional food stalls that line the riverside, so you can savor the toothsome offerings of Shizuoka prefecture as well as some one of a kind mementos of your time enjoying the first blooming sakura.