As Japan's cherry blossoms bloom at slightly different times each year, a visitor to Tokyo may need a bit of luck to catch them in all their full glory.
One Singaporean is very sure he will not miss the sakura (cherry blossom in Japanese) or the sometimes boisterous hanami (flower viewing) parties that are very much part of this season.
"I have heard so much about the hanami season, so I am looking forward to my first gathering this week," said executive Paul Tan, who arrived in Tokyo last Thursday to take up a posting.
"It will also be a good start to understanding the Japanese culture, which can only help in my work."
The sakura has a very special place in the hearts of the Japanese.
Not only does it herald the coming of spring, it is also associated with graduations or entering a school or company - milestones in the life of a person which take place around the time the blooms appear.
On March 7, as is customary, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) stoked nationwide excitement by unveiling its "sakura frontline" map for the country. This indicated that the flowers would bloom much earlier than usual this year.
No one thought to question the JMA's forecast since Japan has been experiencing warm winters for many years, a phenomenon which encourages early blossoms.
In Tokyo's Ueno Park, a favourite sakura viewing spot, employees rushed to string up 1,300 lamps for night viewing of the flowers.
In other cities, workers gave up rest days to make frantic preparations for the early opening of sakura festivals.
But a week later, on March 14, there were red faces at the JMA after it revealed that its computer had given wrong forecasts for Tokyo and three other cities.
But no one really minded.
Department stores, for one, did not complain. Hanami lunch boxes reportedly sold briskly at Takashimaya even though not a blossom was in sight.
Social commentator Tsuyoshi Mori was quoted in the Yomiuri Shimbun as saying: "A forecast is after all a forecast. One expects it to change. Anyway, hanami is just a diversion. Getting all flurried is also part of the fun. If everything went according to schedule, it would be most boring."
The business of predicting when the sakura will bloom has always been error-prone.
The JMA uses a method based on average daily temperature data from the past few decades.
But March is a difficult month because of sharp variations in daily temperatures, with warm spring-like weather often followed by wintry cold days which can throw predictions off.
The JMA's final announcement that "the sakura is at last here" was as usual based on observations of the condition of the blooms on one particular sakura tree in the grounds of the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo.
According to the JMA, the sakura started to flower in Tokyo on March 20, but will not be in full bloom until the middle of this week.
Yasukuni, better known as the shrine that honours Class A war criminals among 2.4 million war dead, is another favourite sakura viewing spot.
But before World War II, its link with the sakura was much more than that. Japanese soldiers then were often compared to the beautiful but short- lived sakura, and they swore to meet their comrades at Yasukuni if they were to die on the battlefield.
After the war, public anger at the military for exploiting the sakura's image was so strong that many such trees in public parks and along roadsides were reportedly chopped down by residents.
There are about 400 varieties of sakura, but the most familiar is the delicate someiyoshino, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the total and to which the JMA's predictions apply.
A hybrid produced by mixing two natural varieties, the someiyoshino can be reproduced only by grafting.
Visitors to Tokyo next month will just miss the someiyoshino, as the blooms last only a week to 10 days, but they can still catch the heavy-petalled yaezakura variety.
Visitors can also follow the sakura frontline as it moves northwards, arriving in the northern part of the main island of Honshu around mid-April and in Hokkaido at the end of April.
