A Monday night in early April, and Maruyama Park in central Kyoto is packed with festive crowds. The paths are lined by stalls selling whole herrings smoked in ash and served on a stick, whole barbecued squid, also on a stick, charcoal-baked yam, chocolate-coated bananas and many other less easily identified treats. The cooking food makes an exotic mixture of scents that mingles with laughter in the air, and as darkness deepens the colourful paper lanterns on the stalls are lit. What has drawn all these people out into the cool night, and what is fuelling their great good humour? The food alone could not create this festive, carefree atmosphere. No, the main attraction here is sakura, the blossom of the cherry trees that grow all over the park. This week it reaches its peak, drawing thousands of people to revel in the almost ethereal beauty of the floodlit blossom and celebrate the promise of spring. Since early morning there have been tarpaulins laid out to reserve places beneath the trees. Now this sea of pale blue plastic is obscured by revellers enjoying a hanami, or flower festival, picnic.

All life is here, beneath the raft of beautiful pink blossom and the indigo night sky. There are huge, informal groups of students, more formal ones of men in suits and women in kimonos, and intimate family groups made up of only parents and their small children. By eight o'clock it's standing room only and a couple of late arrivals must squash themselves into a niche between a tree trunk and the corner of a hedge. It is perhaps surprising that the citizens of this intensely urban and technologically advanced country should still gather in their thousands to celebrate the blossoming of the cherry with a festival that is already 1,500 years old. However, the same acutely felt link with the natural world also draws the crowds into Japanese gardens, where they find nature condensed and brought to perfection. Trees are trained and sculpted until they epitomize the very best of the trees' tree-like qualities, the finest natural landscapes are reproduced in miniature and the seasons are celebrated with spring blossom and the fiery leaves of autumn.