I went to the Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC two weeks ago. If you are not familiar with the Sakura Matsuri Festival, it is a festival held every year in the middle of April while the cherry blossoms are in bloom. This festival occurs for one day, but there are events all throughout the month to celebrate the cherry blossoms in bloom, as well as the peaceful, friendly relationship between the United States and Japan 🏯.

The Cherry Blossom Festival occurs throughout the United States; it starts at the end of March and goes until the middle of April. The U.S. did not have cherry blossom trees until they received them from a prior Japanese mayor: the Mayor of Tokyo, who gave the U.S. 3,000 cherry blossom trees in the early 1900s.

Many cultures celebrate the beautiful cherry blossoms in bloom, including Japan and India. In Japan, there is not really a festival like in the United States, but the Japanese do celebrate these trees in bloom by having picnics underneath them. Japanese people will drink wine and sake with their friends, family, and coworkers underneath these trees. The Japanese people simply enjoy looking at the cherry blossom trees in bloom; Japanese people even have a special word for watching flowers called, “hanami”/flower viewing.

The sakura trees are only in bloom for a short time, around 2 weeks, so people from all over the world come to the United States, especially to Washington, DC, to see the cherry blossoms in bloom during this time.

If you want to learn more about the history of the cherry blossom festival and this species of flowers, I made a video about them.

Cherry Blossom Video

Japanese Fashion During The Sakura Cherry Blossom Festival

During the Sakura Cherry Blossom Festival, people who love Japan 🏮, as well as its culture, fashion 👘, food 🍙, and language, come out to eat traditional Japanese food, such as Okonomiyaki (Japanese seafood pancake) and takoyaki (ball-shaped octopus cooked in tempura batter).

During the Sakura Festival, you will see people wearing kimonos (a longer, thicker, long-sleeved traditional Japanese dress worn with geta sandals), yukatas (a thinner, summer traditional Japanese dress with shorter sleeves worn with zori sandals, which are thicker wooden sandals than getas), obis (the sash at the waist of traditional Japanese dresses), tabi (white two-toed socks), geta (wooden sandals), and Japanese hair accessories.

Two women wearing traditional Japanese kimono dresses

At the festival, you will also see people dressed up in popular Japanese fashion clothing like Harajuku and Cosplay fashion.

At the Cherry Blossom Festival, you can also find a Japanese language school in the area to learn the Japanese language, you can learn about Japanese culture and major Japanese cities, listen and dance to J-pop music, and watch koto performances.

Here are some amazing Harajuku fashionistas and Cosplayers that I saw at the 2019 Sakura Cherry Blossom Festival this year

Two women wearing traditional Japanese yukatas and geta sandals

In addition to taking many pictures, I also filmed/vlogged the Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival this year. You can watch this video below

Sakura Matsuri Festival Video

Sakura Festival

2019 DC

DL's Health & Beauty

Enter the realm of health, wellness, beauty, makeup, and fashion. The world is full of so many different forms of beauty. Every culture has its own unique beauty, but one thing that all of them have in common is that healthy is always beautiful. But health is not constant or instant in life. Health is part of the life journey that we are all on until our time is up.

We all have a unique health journey. My health journey started in college when I studied human health and disease at The University of The District of Columbia. Later, I studied health and psychology at The University of Maryland University College. After college, I continued following medical breakthroughs around the world, from India to the UK. I soon realized that there was so much health knowledge out there, but so few people had access to it. Thus, I turned to writing. My goal is to share valuable health breakthroughs with the world and connect health to beauty and multiculturalism; that is how this site came to life.

Wherever you are in your health and wellness journey, there is always more to learn and there is beauty to be found everywhere in various forms. So, let's walk this path together and discover fully what the realm of health and beauty has to offer!