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Torahime, Shiga-ken
Date Published
2nd April 2017
Following the bloom of the sakura, I stopped by the beautiful small town of Torahime in Shiga, Japan.
It’s full of rice fields, rivers, sudden hills dotted with shrines, and is bordered by both mountains and Biwako, Japan’s largest freshwater lake.
In this part of the country it’s not uncommon to see the quaint 2-4 car train carriages, although timing their passing is tough as they only go by every 30 minutes or so, a far cry from the incessant arrivals and departures on Tokyo train tracks.
The weather was unfortunately quite hazy, and the plant life still quite brown, but cherry blossoms tend to lift even the dreariest of surroundings. There’s a particularly lovely quiet avenue of sakura along Anegawa, with a view towards Mt Ibuki.