Hanegi Park Plum Blossoms 2025: Finding Blue Skies

A flash of pink and white scrolled past on my X feed—plum blossoms. In the first week of February, it felt early, but the photos didn’t lie. The 2025 plum blossom season in Tokyo was quietly beginning, and I knew I had to be there.

Getting to Hanegi Park for the first blooms

The question wasn’t if I should go, but where. For me, the answer is always the same for the first blooms of the year: Hanegi Park. It’s a personal tradition. So, I jumped on the Keio-Inokashira Line to Higashi-Matsubara Station for the familiar five-minute walk, camera in hand.

What to expect from an early-season visit

The 2025 plum blossom season has only started. Actually, it “officially” starts tomorrow for most parks. Many flowers were in full bloom. Many unformed buds were on the branches, too. They’ll be better in another week.

Few people were there as it was a weekday. That’s always a good thing. I didn’t have to wait for people to move to take photos.

So even though I was early, I’m glad I went. I had enough full bloom flowers to work with. Not a cloud was in the sky. The pinks, whites, and reds looked amazing with a perfectly blue background. The day was still, and the petals sat perfectly still for us. Things don’t get much better than that.

The lost view of Mount Fuji: A bittersweet moment

Something crushed me, though. A long time ago, you could see Mount Fuji from Hanegi Park. In 2017, I even got a photo of it. Every other year, the mountain was covered by clouds. Would this be the year to capture it? Well, a big apartment building is in the way now, so I’ll never get it again. That was sad.

A quick photography lesson: Depth of field

I also learned something about my full-frame cameras. Shooting with the f/4 lens fully open at 105 mm isn’t a good idea for flower photography. The depth of field is so thin.

Yes, I wanted a blurred background, but the results weren’t attractive. Only a thin sliver of the flower was in focus. Some parts of it weren’t. They looked ugly. I’ll need to experiment with that.

The plum blossom season is just beginning

That’s okay because I have more chances to practice from now on. I’ll photograph plum blossoms many more times this month. I’ll visit Yushima Tenjin and Koishikawa Korakuen next week if the weather holds. That is something to look forward to. The season is warming up.