Petals, Temples and Bullet Trains: A Spring Passage Through Japan

A spring arrival in Tokyo

There is a particular kind of anticipation that belongs to Japan in March. It begins before landing, somewhere between the long night flight from London and the first glimpse of Tokyo’s urban sprawl beneath the aircraft window. For Citibond guests departing on 18 March 2025, this was not simply the start of a 12-day journey through Japan; it was an arrival into a season the country treats almost as a national poem.

Tokyo met the group with its familiar duality: immaculate order and restless energy, glass towers and old shopfronts, commuter crossings and pockets of ritual quiet. After settling into the city, the first days opened into its layered character. From the Tokyo Skytree, the Kanto region stretched outward in a pale spring haze, a vastness of rooftops, rivers and distant mountains. Below, Sumida’s old downtown spirit offered another tempo — closer to the street, to neighbourhood rhythms, to the enduring culture of shitamachi.

At Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa, smoke curled from incense burners and drifted across the approach to the great temple gate. Nakamise shopping street carried the scent of warm snacks and sweet confections, its stalls busy with visitors moving slowly beneath lanterns and shop awnings. Later, Shibuya Crossing delivered Tokyo in a single choreographed pulse: hundreds of people stepping forward at once, then dissolving into the city. The statue of Hachiko, patient and familiar, drew its inevitable circle of photographs.

Beneath the blossom canopy

The full day devoted to cherry blossom was the emotional centrepiece of Tokyo. At Ueno Park, sakura trees gathered overhead in a soft canopy of pink and white, their petals catching the light like fragments of paper. Cameras clicked, but so did something quieter: the instinct to pause, to look up, to understand why this brief flowering carries such power in Japanese culture.

At Chidorigafuchi Moat, the blossom became almost architectural. The 700-metre tunnel of cherry trees curved along the water, branches leaning inwards as though drawn towards their own reflection. Petals drifted over the surface, and the city seemed momentarily hushed around the edges. A photo stop near the Imperial Palace added another frame to the day — stone walls, still water, spring colour and the restrained elegance of Tokyo’s imperial landscape.

Shinjuku Gyoen offered a gentler register: lawns, pathways and blossom seen at walking pace. It was here that spring felt less like spectacle and more like atmosphere, something held in the air and carried on coats and camera straps. The guests moved through the gardens not hurriedly, but with the pleasant aimlessness that blossom season invites.

Fuji, hot springs and mountain roads

Leaving Tokyo, the route turned towards Hakone and the presence of Mount Fuji. Japan’s highest mountain, rising to 3,776 metres, is never just a view; it is an idea the country returns to again and again in art, memory and imagination. Weather permitting, the journey to the 5th Station brought guests close to its slopes, where the scale of the mountain could be felt even through shifting cloud.

Hakone changed the texture of the journey. The air sharpened. Steam rose from Owakudani, the volcanic valley where hot spring water and mineral earth remind visitors that Japan’s beauty often comes from deep geological restlessness. The Hakone Ropeway opened wide panoramas over ridges and valleys, while Lake Ashi offered a calmer scene: water, mountains and sky arranged with almost deliberate grace. A boat cruise across the lake gave the day the quality of a postcard, though the wind and light made it entirely real.

From there, the road continued to Matsumoto and onwards into the mountain culture of Takayama. At Takayama Jinya, the former government outpost spoke of administration, timber, trade and regional authority. Nearby Sanmachi, with its preserved streets and wooden façades, invited slower exploration. In the sake breweries, the flavour of locally brewed rice wine added another sense memory to the journey — clean, rounded, and rooted in place.

Villages, gates and golden reflections

The visit to Shirakawa-go carried the group into one of Japan’s most distinctive rural landscapes. In Ogimachi-Shirakawa, the UNESCO-listed gassho-zukuri farmhouses stood with steep thatched roofs designed for heavy mountain snow. Their name, often translated as hands joined in prayer, felt particularly apt: the houses seemed both practical and devotional, shaped by climate, labour and generations of rural life.

Kyoto, when it arrived, brought a different kind of depth. At Fushimi Inari Taisha, thousands of vermilion torii gates led the eye and body along a sacred path, each gate a threshold, each step a small act of passage. The colour was intense against the woodland shade — red-orange pillars, dark earth, green leaves, occasional shafts of sun.

Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, offered another form of stillness. Reflected in its surrounding pond, the temple seemed to hover between architecture and image. In Arashiyama, the bamboo forest shifted the mood again: tall green stems rising in close ranks, the soundscape reduced to footsteps, wind and the dry knock of bamboo moving against bamboo. The source of wonder here was not grandeur, but verticality, filtered light and a sense of being briefly enclosed by living columns.

Tea, deer and the great bronze Buddha

Kyoto’s cultural encounters continued at Kiyomizu Temple, where the elevated position opened views across the city and its surrounding slopes. A kimono experience and Japanese-style tea ceremony brought guests closer to the gestures of tradition — the careful fold, the measured pour, the quiet discipline of attention. Such moments often linger because they ask travellers to slow down and notice the weight of small actions.

In Nara, the mood softened into delight. At Nara Deer Park, the resident deer approached with calm entitlement, prompting laughter as guests fed them and stepped carefully between their inquisitive faces. Todaiji Temple, by contrast, restored scale and awe. The Great Buddha sat within the vast wooden hall with a composure that seemed to rearrange the air around it, inviting silence even among visitors.

Osaka’s lights and Hiroshima’s silence

Osaka brought the journey into a brighter, more urban register. A photo stop at Osaka Castle placed spring against a symbol of power and endurance, while the Umeda Sky Building gave the city back as a panorama — roads, towers and evening light spreading towards the horizon. In Shinsaibashi, and amid the energy of Osaka’s night-time streets, the group encountered a more exuberant Japan: illuminated signs, shopfronts, movement, and the irresistible pull of street food. The source journey recalls Dotonbori’s mouth-watering flavours too, a fitting taste of Osaka’s appetite for sociability.

The final major excursion carried guests by Shinkansen to Hiroshima, covering 331 kilometres in around one and a half hours — a reminder of Japan’s extraordinary rail culture and the ease with which the country moves between speed and reflection. At the Peace Memorial Park and Atomic Bomb Dome, the journey entered its most solemn chapter. The Dome, the only structure left standing near the hypocentre, remains not as a monument to destruction alone, but as a witness. After days of blossom, temples, mountains and laughter, Hiroshima asked for a different kind of attention: respectful, quiet, human.

By the time guests transferred for the flight back to London on Day 12, Japan had offered many faces: neon Tokyo and old Asakusa, Fuji’s majesty and Hakone’s steam, Takayama’s sake houses, Shirakawa-go’s thatched roofs, Kyoto’s gates and bamboo, Nara’s deer, Osaka’s evening pulse, Hiroshima’s enduring memory. Yet the thread running through it all was spring — those brief blossoms appearing along moats, in parks and beside temple paths, reminding everyone who walked beneath them that beauty is often most powerful when it cannot be held for long.