Hanami (Cherry Blossom Viewing)
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40 free Hanami (Cherry Blossom Viewing) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every spring Japan stops to look up. Hanami, the custom of gathering under flowering cherry trees, is more than a thousand years old, and it still shapes office parties, school photos and the nightly news forecasts that follow the blossoms across the country. This quiz covers the whole story: how an aristocratic pastime became a national picnic, the food and drink people bring, the best-known viewing spots, the cultivars and customs behind the scenery, and the festivals the trees inspired from North America to Europe and Korea. It suits travellers planning a spring trip, students of Japanese language and culture, and anyone who has ever sat on a picnic sheet under falling petals. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than the forecast.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Before cherry trees took over in the Heian period, which tree's blossoms did Japan's earliest hanami parties admire?
Plum
Plum blossoms were the fashion of the Nara-period court, and they are still viewed today at quieter parties that tend to draw an older crowd.
Q 02A teasing Japanese proverb says most hanami-goers care less about the flowers than about which food?
Dumplings
Dumplings rather than flowers, runs the saying, and hanami has its own kind: a skewer of three in pink, white and green.
Q 03What happened to the first 2,000 cherry trees Tokyo sent to Washington, found riddled with insects in 1910?
They were burned
They were burned on presidential orders to protect American growers, and Tokyo answered with a second, healthy shipment of 3,020 trees in 1912.
Q 04Which Japanese prefecture sees the country's first cherry blossoms of the year, opening as early as January?
Okinawa
Okinawa's subtropical islands bloom in midwinter, some two months before the season reaches Tokyo around the end of March.
Q 05Which sport's Japanese national team, nicknamed the Brave Blossoms, has worn a cherry blossom badge since 1930?
Rugby
Rugby gave the flower a sporting life: the first badge showed a bud, a half-open and a full bloom, replaced in 1952 by three open flowers.
Q 06A popular saying about hanami, taken from a Motojiro Kajii short story, claims what lies buried under the cherry trees?
Dead bodies
Dead bodies are the story's startling opening image, and the line is still quoted when Japan's parks fill with picnickers each spring.
Q 07Which US first lady planted the first of Tokyo's gift cherry trees in Washington in March 1912?
Helen Taft
Helen Taft planted it alongside the wife of Japan's ambassador, then presented her with a bouquet of American Beauty roses.
Q 08A Japanese proverb holds that as the cherry blossom is first among flowers, who is first among men?
The warrior
The warrior was likened to the flower because his life, however glorious, could end suddenly; kabuki theatre popularised the saying.
Q 09Sakuramochi, the pink hanami sweet wrapped in a salt-pickled cherry leaf, is filled with a paste of what?
Red bean
Red bean paste fills a sweet said to have been invented in 1717 by a temple gatekeeper in Edo, using leaves he swept from the temple grounds.
Q 10In which month do Japan's school and fiscal years begin, so that first days often fall amid the cherry blossoms?
April
April opens both, which is why welcome parties for new classmates and colleagues are so often held as hanami under the trees.
Q 11Which drink, once shared after offerings to the spirits believed to live in cherry trees, still fuels hanami parties?
Sake
Sake was poured at the Heian court's blossom feasts, and it remains the standard drink at parties that can run late into the night.
Q 12Hanami grew out of which country's custom of enjoying poetry and wine beneath flowering trees?
China
China's elite gathered to drink and write verse beneath the blossoms, and Japan's Nara-period aristocrats copied the fashion in their cities.
Q 13Before hanami became a party, cherry blossoms were watched as the signal to plant which crop?
Rice
Rice planting was announced by the blossoms, which were also read as an omen for the size of the coming harvest.
Q 21Which Japanese coin has carried a design of cherry blossoms on its face since 1967?
100 yen
100 yen coins gained their blossoms when silver was dropped from the alloy, a change that set off hoarding and smuggling of the older coins.
Q 22Which flowering trees did the United States send to Japan by 1915 as a return gift for Washington's cherry trees?
Dogwoods
Dogwoods answered a gift that kept growing: Japan gave another 3,800 cherry trees in 1965, accepted by Lady Bird Johnson.
Q 23Which Georgia city bills itself as the Cherry Blossom Capital of the World, with some 300,000 trees?
Macon
Macon's trees trace back to a local realtor, William Fickling, who found one in his own yard and began giving saplings away around town.
Q 14Tsukimi, an autumn cousin of hanami marked with pampas grass decorations, is a party held to admire what?
The moon
The moon is honoured with seasonal offerings such as taro and chestnuts, a custom traced to Heian aristocrats who recited poetry beneath it.
Q 15Washington's cherry trees from Tokyo ring which body of water, where the first two were planted in 1912?
Tidal Basin
Tidal Basin planting began on the north bank, where a Japanese stone lantern carved in 1651 is lit each spring during the city's festival.
Q 16Which Canadian city of more than 40,000 cherry trees has held a festival since 2005 honouring a gift from Japan?
Vancouver
Vancouver's festival commemorates 800 trees given by Japan, and Queen Elizabeth Park is among the favourite places to see the bloom.
Q 17Which big Japanese city is among the last on the cherry blossom front's route, blooming more than a month after Tokyo?
Sapporo
Sapporo's trees were forecast to open on May 1 in 2018, against March 26 in Tokyo, as the blossom front crept north to Hokkaido.
Q 18Which Tokyo hanami hotspot, home to several major museums, hangs paper lanterns among some 800 cherry trees?
Ueno Park
Ueno Park's count climbs to about 1,200 trees once those of the neighbouring shrine and temple grounds are included.
Q 19Which nearly white cherry cultivar, named after a village now inside Tokyo, is Japan's most popular tree for hanami?
Somei-yoshino
Somei-yoshino trees are all clones grafted from a single original, which is why a whole park bursts into bloom at once.
Q 20Hanami held after dark, with paper lanterns hung among the cherry trees, goes by which Japanese name?
Yozakura
Yozakura literally means night cherry blossom, and in big cities the parties beneath the lanterns can last until late.
Q 24The thousand-year-old Miharu Takizakura in Fukushima is a cherry tree named after which natural feature?
A waterfall
A waterfall is what its pale pink blossoms resemble as they spill in all directions from the branches, drawing some 300,000 visitors a year.
Q 25Which canal-side path in Kyoto, running between Ginkaku-ji and Nanzen-ji, is a favourite stroll during hanami?
Philosopher's Walk
Philosopher's Walk owes its name to two Kyoto University professors, Nishida Kitaro and Hajime Tanabe, thought to have exercised there daily.
Q 26Sakurayu, a tea of salt-pickled cherry blossoms steeped in hot water, is traditionally served at which occasion?
Weddings
Weddings avoid green tea because a Japanese idiom about clouding the tea means being evasive, while the unfurling blossom stands for a beginning.
Q 27Cherry blossoms and leaves owe their scent to coumarin, a compound usually described as smelling like what?
Vanilla
Vanilla is the comparison, and salt-curing the leaves and petals for food cuts their coumarin to acceptable levels while keeping the scent.
Q 28The folk song Sakura Sakura is often the first piece taught to beginners on which Japanese stringed instrument?
Koto
Koto beginners can play every phrase on neighbouring strings, and the tune, far from ancient, was a popular city melody of the Edo period.
Q 29Japan's official observers declare a city's cherry blossoms open once a designated sample tree shows how many flowers?
About 5
About 5 open flowers, officially five or six, are enough for the announcement, while full bloom is called only once 80% of the blossoms are out.
Q 30Which Japanese aesthetic concept did 18th-century scholar Motoori Norinaga link to the brief life of cherry blossoms?
Mono no aware
Mono no aware, often translated as the pathos of things, casts the falling petals as a lesson in accepting fate gracefully.