When I’m leading my annual Japan Cherry Blossom photo workshops, participants frequently ask me about the earliest blooming sakura in Japan.  The second question is always, “Have you seen them” or “Have you photographed them?”  Before they go any further, I tell them there are actually two answers to the question.  If the participant is asking about the earliest blooming sakura in Japan, it’s Okinawa.  There’s a nearly 500 meter (1640 ft) tall mountain that is famous throughout Japan for having the earliest blossoms of the entire country.  The type of cherry blossoms one would see there are the Kanhizakura (Prunus campanulata) variety, which are shaped like bells and distinctly pink.  I continue to explain that the most famous early blooming variety are in Kanagawa, Tokyo, and Shizuoka, the Kawazu-zakura (Prunus lannesiana), a cold resistant type of cherry blossoms that start blooming in early February, sometimes when there is still snow in the prefectures; also, these cherry blossom remain on the tree for over two too three weeks, unlike others that fall within a week after blooming.  The crimson, five-petaled Kawazu-zakura are a sight to behold, especially with the warbling white eye, mejiro bird (Zosterops japonicus), and the Brown-eared bulbul (Hypsipetes amaurotis), being drawn to these cherry blossoms them like bears to honey.  The mejiro and brown eared bulbul have a the perfectly shaped bill to slurp the ever so sweet nectar of these cherry blossoms, and all flowers.  Also, the Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), should get an honorary mention here as well.  They, too, love the sweat nectar of the cherry blossoms, but they do not have a properly shaped bill to extract the nectar when they first bloom, so they wait till late spring, before the flowers are about to fall to the ground, and they pluck the flowers off the tree and slurp the nectar from the back of the flower.  This is pure genius, so the next time you see a bunch of cherry blossoms on the ground perfectly intact, you know its due to the Eurasian tree sparrow.