JAPAN BLOOMS

“We are all merely passing by,” says a haiku about the brevity of life and cherry blossoms. Romanticizing a shoot is as easy as watching a river; you see your reflection show on a petal emerging so heroically from a snag after winter — or before a bad fall — and feel more alive.

DAILY TRIBUNE sends you on your merry way to Japan for a cherry-blossom pilgrimage in time for Lent — from Hokkaido in the north to Shimane in the south (and the nine yards in between) — where you can most resonate well with spring.

SHIMANE: HOMAGE TO AN ERA

Go back in time meandering through one of the oldest buildings in the quaint, old castle town of Tsuwano, where one is at once greeted by equally stoic stone lanterns and a red Torii gate unblighted by the ravages of man and the millennium.

Save for spring, the Washibara Hachimangu Shrine is cordial to your sense of quiet, a walk through a lane punctuated by Sakura trees in full bloom come April.

Aside from taking in the blossoms, locals and tourists here partake in the august tradition of Japanese archery at Yabusame Festival every year on the first Sunday of April, a rare sight where archers, clad in ermine gowns of a rural bygone, hit the eye on giddy horses.

KAGAWA: A GARDEN OF TRADITIONS

The 100-year-old Ritsurin Garden in Kagawa Prefecture is a trip through four seasons, a mixed-bag of attractions for which you visit Japan on a jaunt or a journey: From the dainty bloom of cherry and plum in spring to the passionate foliage of autumn and radiant flowers on high sunny days painted like a Murakami on a canvas of timeless natural columns and pine trees.

The garden has pocket ponds and rolling hills, flanking the proud Mount Shiun. Ritsurin Garden has 300 cherry trees of varying degrees of shades, think the graceful somei-yoshino and the modest shidarezakura.

Cap an idyllic stroll soaking in the cherry blossoms by hopping on a Japanese-style canoe tour of the lake and surrender your rather complicated view of the world.

CHIBA: SPRING FROM A CHOO-CHOO TRAIN

The view from the window of a moving train cannot be overlooked in Japan in spring, a series of pictures you see as much as listen to calm.

Take the local Kominato trains that slither through the quaint Chiba Prefecture countryside on a leisure speed enough to soak in occasional wooden houses that dot expansive fields of nanohana and cherry blossoms.

The journey begins at Goi Station, easily accessible from Tokyo. Commandeer seats in a kawaii café called Kominato Waiting for light meals and keepsake while preparing for the ride.

The Kominato Line passes 18 stations in a route chockablock with bucolic views of farms and sometimes seemingly endless rivers, where your thoughts drift aimlessly throughout the duration of an almost 3-hour recreational ride.

Getting off at different stations is an exploratory option, where you may stumble upon a scene remotely familiar because you must have seen it on TV: the wooden station of Kanto, unchanged since the 1930s. Or you can choose to be marooned along the Kominato Railway Line just an hour from Tokyo to bask in the beauty of Chiba Prefecture’s Satoyama Landscapes up close to match your pace.

MIYAGI: THE HILLS HAVE EYES

The once magisterial Funaoka Castle in Miyagi Prefecture has become a ruins park popular for its lush blanket of 1,000 somei-yoshino cherry trees.

Light-pink cherry blossoms surface as spring approaches an enchanted kingdom every year in early April, heralded by Shibata Sakura Festival as an ode to bloom.

Stroll alongside a quiet river against Sakura trees on Shiroishigawa banks. Perhaps hanami with a picnic. Or inch to the castle summit for a breathtaking view of Shibata town’s Sakura bedspread, where, farther down against a hazy horizon, one can see as far as the Zao Mountain ranges on a clear day.

A grueling hike to top necessarily competitive thus not fun? Might as well hop on a retro slope car that takes you up, up and away in four minutes, a rather ironic slow ride through a tunnel of cherry blossoms.

The Funaoka Peace Kannon statue, a 24-meter-tall symbol of Shibata Town, is an experience that is not so easy to miss.

HOKKAIDO: A COMMUNION

The great white north thaws the way it might in a curtain call, unfurling 1500 cherry blossom trees in Goryokaku Park, one of the most sought-after spots in Hokkaido.

The former Shogunate Army fort has been transformed to a draw for tourists the world over come thick season, where visitors pad about the lawns or paddle the moat on rented boats underneath the pink, if not verdant, umbrella.

Come fall, the umbrella sheds to transform the ditch into a jacuzzi tub brimming with floral ornaments, confetti of petals to drop you on the knees for a yes.

Atop the 107-meter-tall Goryokaku Tower beside the park, you can either look straight down through the glass floor, or direct yourself out as far as the eyes can see: Mount Hakodate, the Tsugaru Straits, the Yokotsu mountain range, a view of the sakura-covered star-shaped park, and a lot of other moving parts that at once possesses you even in a place where you’re the lord of all creations.