Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival 2014

As I have every year (see last year's post here), I attended the Spring Blossom Festival this morning. Unlike previous years, they changed the dates, because unexpected warm weather tricked them into blooming early. The original dates were April 14 to 20, by which time there will not be a single flower still on a tree. Last year, the blooms came late. The NPS used to have a webpage showing a formula for predicting the peak blossom dates, but they've replaced it with this one.

Both Korea and the US received their cherry trees as a gift from the Japanese government around the turn of the last century. In Washington, they placed them around the Tidal Basin, and in Korea they are near the National Assembly.


I went expecting to see flowers but no festival, but the usual goings-on were going on. Balloon giveaways, photo ops with chartoon characters, free drum-banging, Spiderman, some guy with a cardboard box on his head ...


A popular attraction is the street portrait artists:


Here I am being murdered by a ninja made of Legos:


But the star of the show remains the cherry blossoms:


The greenery in that last shot is but a reminder of the passage of time. The blooms will soon fade away and fall off. In fact, each gust of wind produced a flurry of pink petals that twisted and hovered for a moment before gracing the ground.


If you want to see them, better hurry!