桜料理　（Sakura-Ryouri）

2nd March – 弥生

Sakura blooms beautiful and fall gorgeously. However, not only making us enjoy seeing them but also letting us having a great taste of it – we can eat sakura!

Some people might have seen it, that there are many shops selling sakura flower pickled in salt. It generally be used in Japanese sweets called 和菓子 (Wagashi), adding the cute color to the normal looks.

Actually it is told that we can eat the raw sakura flower as it does not have poison, but it is not delicious.

Generally for food, 八重桜 (Yae zakura) which has brilliant pink color with good smell, and 大島桜 (Ooshima zakura) with sweet smell and soft texture are used.

Eating Sakura have some great benefit to our body, such as improving blood circulation, anti-aging, killing the viruses and giving relaxing effect. But eating Sakura too much will cause liver problems and weaken it, therefore I recommend you to eat it with moderation.

The most famous Sakura food might be 桜餅 (Sakura-mochi). It has sweet and salty taste, using sakura flower with leaves.

Sakura mochi has different shapes in Eastern Japan and Western Japan.

Eastern Japan: Called 長命寺 (Choumeiji), having smooth red beans paste with pale pink color. Shaped like the bottom picture.

Western Japan: called 道明寺 (Doumyouji), using sticky rice outside and have the strong pink color just like the picture below.

Some information for where to see the　beautiful Sakura

-Kyoto: 淀水路 (Yodosuiro) From Mid February to the end of March, you can see 河津桜(Kawazu zakura)

-Nara: 吉野山 (Mt. Yoshino) From the early April to mid April, you can see 30,000 Sakuras mainly シロヤマザクラ (Shiroyama zakura) in the mountain.

-Tokyo: 目黒川 (Meguro river) From late March till early April, you can see ソメイヨシノ(Someiyoshino) along the river. there has Sakura festival around the time.