And so we enter the wisteria.

Called 藤 fuji in Japanese, these beautiful hanging flowers start as soon as the cherry blossoms finish. Most parks will have at least one or more giant wisteria tree that will give us hundreds of the gorgeous flowers. They are usually purple, sometimes white. They give off a sweet scent that seems to attract just about every bee in the city, so there is a constant low buzz of hundreds of bees flying around. They won't hurt us (they seem more like bumblebees than any of the more stinging-prone kind) but they are big, making some people nervous.

The only real downside to wisteria is that unlike the cherry blossoms which are spread out, the wisteria tree has limited space under it, meaning it is almost always very crowded making it hard to find free space.

But so worth it to see!

	David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.