Yokohama expands cherry blossom info site with tourist support

Hanamiru Spot Yokohama has been relaunched with a suite of updates aimed at both international visitors and local residents, with greater ease of use of its services.

Last month, the City of Yokohama partnered with GreenSnap Inc., the operator of the GreenSnap plant community app, to introduce enhanced functionalities. The site now offers full multilingual support in English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, which enables overseas visitors to plan their cherry blossom visits more effectively. Machine translation will process user-generated social media posts into these languages, ensuring real-time reviews and blooming updates are easily accessible.

Yokohama is often known as a “Garden City” with approximately 2,700 parks, and has long highlighted its urban and countryside landscapes. Previously focused on major tourist areas, the platform now covers flower viewing spots across all 18 wards of Yokohama. This wider coverage allows local residents to uncover hidden gems and international tourists to appreciate the full range of the city’s green spaces. Real-time recommendations now guide visitors by aligning bloom timings and social media trends, making it more straightforward to time their visits for the best experience. The project also benefits from the expertise of horticultural designer Masashi Mikami, who has dual roles as a GreenSnap Official Ambassador and Garden Necklace Yokohama Ambassador.

GreenSnap is a popular social networking app for plant enthusiasts, with features including plant identification, growing tips, digital albums, and blogs,  seeing up to 40,000 daily uploads alongside more than 20 million cumulative photo posts. Its new value will make exploring Yokohama more pleasant and deeper for visitors both domestic and international.