Celebrate spring at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival

Posted by sfhi on Mar 26, 2007

Now celebrating its 40th year, the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival is one of California’s most prominent celebrations of Asian traditions. This dazzling display draws more than 150,000 people to San Francisco’s Japantown every year, to experience the color and grace of the Japanese culture and the diversity of the Japanese-American community.

Taking place over two weekends, the event includes a street fair in San Francisco’s Japantown featuring a food bazaar with traditional Japanese cuisine and cooking demonstrations, a Japanese traditional arts and crafts fair, a children’s village, and entertainment stages with performances by Japanese classical and folk dancers, martial artists, taiko drummers, and others.

On April 22, the festival also presents the Cherry Blossom Grand Parade, featuring dozens of floats and more than 1,500 costumed participants from both the Bay Area and Japan, including marching bands, traditional Japanese musicians, kimono-clad dancers, and a mikoshi-a portable shrine carried on the shoulders of a 100-person contingent. The parade starts at Civic Center at 1 p.m. and continues to Post and Fillmore streets in Japantown.