Japan may be famously crazy about cherry blossoms, but the sakuranbo of Sagae City, Yamagata Prefecture, don't attract attention until long after their white flowers have fallen off. Sakuranbo are fruit cherries, and Sagae and neighboring Higashine cultivate more of them than anywhere else in the country.
A drive through the city reveals cherry orchards at every turn: next to a video store, behind a convenience store. Where other cities have parking facilities, rows of vending machines or vacant, rubble-strewn lots, Sagae has neat rows of trees. All told, there are some 400 hectares of sakuranbo producing more than 2,000 tons of fruit annually.
"Around 2,200 people are directly employed in the cherry industry," explains Akihiko Karube of the Sagae branch of the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives. "And that, in turn, supports subsidiary industries such as tourism, the food and hospitality industry, and manufacturers of farm machinery."