Tiffany Ko and Brian Camacho’s kimonos swayed as they wandered from stall to stall during the first weekend of this year’s Cherry Blossom Festival — a trip they’ve made every year since they started dating.
“We just have friends with us this year to walk around and introduce them to new stuff,” said Ko. “But we come here every single year just to have the scenery, have the food and everything like that. It’s pretty cool.”
They were among thousands of attendees who filled Japantown during San Francisco’s annual celebration of cherry blossoms and culture, which was hosted this weekend with live music, and streets lined with stalls vending food and merchandise. The festival will continue next weekend.
During the event, stalls along Post Street represented various aspects of Japanese American culture, including anime, food vendors and Japanese-English bilingual schools.
Due to construction to upgrade the Japanese Peace Plaza, this year’s event presented challenges for planners.
“Our main stage is typically always on the Peace Plaza,” said Matthew Nagatomi, co-chair of the Cherry Blossom Festival. “Not having access to that space makes it really difficult just because everyone wants to go there. Everyone knows it for the beautiful photos, for all the amazing performances. So we really had to work hard this year to strategize how we would reallocate the performances and make sure we can still have a full program for this year.”
Planning for the event began in August last year.
“We start planning with the executive committee,” said Nagatomi. “That’s consisted of 25 to 30 people where we’ll meet monthly to kind of go over our goals and what we need to do to put on a successful event this year.”
San Francisco’s Japantown is the largest in the United States, and as a result, this festival held significance for the Japanese American community.
“We are all one of the largest Japanese American festivals in the country,” Nagatomi said. “We really want to make sure we put on a good show and we want to welcome everyone with open arms, and we want to have everyone have a good time.”
The Shiba Inu Fanciers of Northern California had a stand dedicated to the Japanese dog breed. Johnny Szary, president of the club, explained their mission.
“We’re a group of owners and breeders that are all about preserving the smallest native Japanese breed in Japan,” Szary said. “And we have get-togethers, we do public education booths, we do a picnic in the summer where we have a bunch of people from all over the state come by and we do fun contests and whatnot, and we promote preservation breeders for people that are interested in getting.”
Since Shiba Inu dogs originate from Japan, Szary thought the Cherry Blossom Festival would be a great place to host a booth.
“We figured it was a good cultural exhibit to allow people to come by for a chance to meet them, get some hands-on time with the dogs, ask us questions about the breed, find out if they’re interested in possibly getting one in the future,” Szary said.
Local bands performed various songs while food offerings included WafuDog serving Japanese-style hot dogs, Japanese beer for attendees over 21 and Kimochi holding its annual fundraiser selling teriyaki burgers.
“It’s never going to be the same thing every year,” Camacho said. “If you want to really experience it differently every time, it’s worth coming every year at least once.”
