Every spring in Japan, people are looking forward to that cherry blossom bloom.
But cherry blossom end is fast(about 2 weeks), but falling cherry blossom is also beautiful, it’s like falling snow.
We reraly see perfect full bloom.
So I tried predicting cherry blossom full bloom dates LSTM
Why LSTM ?
Cherry blossom blooming depends on several weeks ago temperature over time.
LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) is a type of recurrent neural network (RNN) that is well-suited for time-series data because it can capture long-term dependencies.
That is why I chose LSTM for this task.
By the way, I use Python for programming.
Dataset
I used historical cherry blossom data from Japan Environment Agency records.
The dataset included
- place
- date
And then I used historical temperature data using OpenWeather API
OpenWeather API data included
- datetime
- temperature
- pressure
- humidity
- atmospheric temperature
- cloudiness, %
- wind speed
- weather
Predict place
The target locations are as follows:
- Hakodate (Hokkaido)
- Morioka (Iwate)
- Gosen (Nigata)
- Ueno (Tokyo)
The target locations are as follow map:
Predicting Cherry Blossom Full Bloom Dates
I predicted cherry blossom full bloom dates using LSTM.
Result is following.
- Hakodate (Hokkaido) : May 2, 2026
- Morioka (Iwate): April 24, 2026
- Gosen (Nigata): April 13, 2026
- Ueno (Tokyo): April 2, 2026
Checking the Answer
According to the Environmental Agency, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom on March 28 this year.
Actually, I went to see the cherry blossoms in Tokyo on March 29. (five days earlier than the prediction and one day after the observed date)
Here is a photo I took at that time.
And, I went to see the cherry blossoms in Tokyo on April 3. (one day after earlier than the prediction and 6 day after )
In fact, on April 3, the cherry blossoms Some of the cherry blossoms had already fallen.
However, the cherry blossoms were still beautiful enough.
Concludion
If you want full cherry blossom, you will visit Japan, It’s diffrent depends on place. So you have to caution.
In Tokyo, cherry blossoms are usually at their best from late March to early April.
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