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World Heritage

Mount Yoshino: 1 Live Camera in Japan

A World Heritage ridge famous for the cherry blossom that fills its slopes. The camera sits at Kami-Senbon, holding the valley town and the layered hills all year round.

What you can see

Mount Yoshino is a ridge in Nara Prefecture and part of the World Heritage site 'Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range'. It has been a place of worship for centuries, and the cherries are not ornamental garden trees but Yamazakura planted as votive offerings, generation after generation. The flowers are close to white, so the hillside reads as a pale haze rather than pink.

As a blossom site it is divided by height, from the foot upward: Shimo-Senbon, Naka-Senbon, Kami-Senbon and Oku-Senbon. The camera is at Kami-Senbon, high on the ridge and looking down into the valley.

It is less known outside the blossom season, but the composition — houses running along the valley, hills layered behind them — holds up all year.

Cameras you can watch now: 1

All 1 are still images. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

The cherries come from early to mid-April. The height difference means they open from Shimo-Senbon upward, the front of full bloom climbing the mountain over about ten days. Kami-Senbon, where the camera is, peaks a few days after the foot.

People come from all over Japan in that fortnight, which makes checking the bloom without going the camera's best use. It refreshes hourly, so one look in the morning tells you where things stand.

Autumn colour is mid to late November. With so many cherry trees, it is cherry leaves that carry it.

For time of day, morning. It looks down into a valley, so shadow falls across the slope in the afternoon. At dawn mist sometimes pools in the valley and leaves only the rooftops above the cloud.

Where Mount Yoshino is

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow all 172 cameras by format, region, subject and provider.
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