2008 Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival

A special announcement from the webmaster

This is a special year for the Cupertino Cherry Blossom Festival. It is the Cherry Blossom Festival's 25th anniversary, and at the same time is the 30th anniversary of the Cupertino-Toyokawa Sister City relationship. Early in 1983, then Toyokawa Mayor Yoshio Yamamoto presented the City of Cupertino with a gift of 200 cherry trees. From those humble beginnings the Cherry Blossom Festival has grown and flourished each year to become what it is you see today.

It is however with the utmost regret that we will be unable to take part in this year's Cherry Blossom Festival. It has simply been one of our greatest pleasures to have visited Cupertino at this time of year for the past three years, learning about the Cherry Blossom Festival and how it is run, helping to set up and take down, and being afforded the chance to promote the City of Toyokawa at one of her Sister City's most succesful annual events.

There will be no Toyokawa Booth this year, but the Cherry Blossom Festival will continue as it always has as a place for the people of the area to get out and spend a day or two relaxing and experiencing a bit of Japanese culture. But that is not the only reason you should make the trip. This is the main fundraiser for the City's Cupertino-Toyokawa Sister City organization. By something as simple as purchasing a glass of beer or soda, you are helping to make it possible for Cupertino students to visit Toyokawa and for Cupertino to host students from Toyokawa each year. And as this is an anniversary year, the organization will be involved as well in various 30th anniversary events, including an exchange of adult delegations in July and in November. Your contribution in any way in time, money, participation, or even just interest will help ensure that this Sister City Program will continue.

There will naturally be no webpages from us about this year's festival, at least insofar as I can conceivably foresee, but for those interested in finding out what the festival is like this year, but are too far away to visit themselves I will provide links below to sites which often provide pictures of the festival and its events. The layout of the festival is generally the same each year, so if you use the maps from this sites' past two years to orient yourself and use a bit of imagination, you should be able to get a pretty good overall picture of what it is like.

We wish all our friends in Cupertino the best of luck in what will most certainly once again be a very succesful festival during a very special year.