Where to See Cherry Blossoms in Korea 2020

The springtime in Japan offers some of most beautiful floral view in the world: cherry blossom trees come out in full bloom, pink and white sakura petals flit amongst ancient castles or play a romantic backdrop. To better enjoy this seasonal spectacle in a trip to Japan , you might want to do some homework first. Planning a trip that matches the time cherries peak is difficult: quite likely that you have reached just after the flowers peaked, or seeing the cherries in a blooming state just as you are leaving.

From erotic poetry to 19th-century romantic painting, “Cherry Pie” to kitschy cherry before it browns, older men believed nubial virgins to have a “best by” date.

Only one fruit can claim to have symbolized both an uncircumcised penis and a vaginal membrane. Where bananas are obvious, and peaches have been assigned backdoor duty, since the 16th century, artists, writers, musicians, and run-of-the-mill perverts have all agreed: There’s something about women and cherries, whether that cherry is in our mouths or waiting to be popped inside of us.

The history of cherries—the actual sweet-and-sour stone fruit—extends all the way back to prehistoric Europe and West Asia, when people were plucking and eating them off wild trees. According to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History , the Roman Empire was cultivating at least eight varieties by the first century AD, though it wasn’t until the 15th century that domestic cherries were widespread throughout Europe. Two centuries later, the future underwear designs cozied up next to apples, peaches, and pears on early settlers’ transatlantic journeys from Europe to America, where we now grow more than a billion pounds’ worth a year, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.

From this thoroughly standard culinary history arose the cherry’s legacy as a sex symbol. Although the fruit is now most frequently associated with the female anatomy, our literary ancestors picked up on the fact that a bulbous cherry pressed up against pouting lips looks like the tip of a dick, and that a pair of cherries dangling over an open mouth resembles another, slightly hairier pair.

In , authors Michel Millot and Jean L’Ange published The School of Venus, an erotic novel that includes the sentence, “There’s a fold of skin towards the tip of which draws back and uncovers a head like a huge red cherry—as pleasant to the touch as anything could be. One of the most notable nods to cherries, though, is one of the earliest.