Sumida Park

This guide to Sumida Park in Tokyo starts with a very practical reason for its rows of cherry trees: an early-1700s scheme by the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune to use picnicking crowds to pack down flood-prone riverbanks. It follows a temple caretaker named Shinroku Yamamoto, who turned the trees' fallen leaves into a pickled sweet still sold nearby, and traces a young, tubercular poet, Masaoka Shiki, who once rented a room above that same shop. Listen for the sakuramochi shop just steps from the water as you walk the promenade.