Japan is under quasi-emergency rule as millions of Japanese citizens storm parks and gardens this time of year.
They all have one thing in common: to secure themselves a picnic space under cherry trees.
The country is enchanted by the blooming of the sakura, the cherry blossoms, which, year after year, cover the Japanese archipelago in a faint pink veil.
As soon as the first flowers appear, there is no holding back for most Japanese.
Reports appear on radio and television and in newspapers and Web sites to track the blossoms, which have excited the Japanese for more than a millennium.
The Far Eastern nation follows with fascination the development of the so-called sakura front, which starts in the southern island of Kyushu and then gradually extends northward.
Japan's weather office doesn't limit its forecasts to the rain and sun but extends them this time of year also to the delicate buds and reports to the smallest detail when and where they do finally open.
Web sites are dedicated solely to displaying photos of the cherry blossoms, which sakura lovers all over the country can download onto their mobile phones.
One Web site, the Sakura Project, for example, allows users to act as regional monitors, report on the blossoms from their respective locations and download photos. Each registered Web site member then has the option to comment on the development of blossoms on particular trees.
Magazines, meanwhile, print special editions on the best places to view the hanami, or "flower show," which more often than not develops into alcohol-drenched parties under the blossoming cherry trees.
Parks and even narrow strips along main roads where there is hardly a cherry tree to see become places where groups of happy revellers gather and drink, eat and gossip late into the night.
Competitions also regularly erupt over securing prime viewing space. Companies that plan to treat their staff to a hanami evening, for instance, often send new employees to the designated area during working hours to claim a particular spot.
On weekends, millions of families, friends, students and work colleagues pass sake bottles under the canopy of the cherry flowers as barbecue grills sizzle with chicken legs and calamari.
Karaoke competitions are also high on the agenda, but the parties' collective drunkenness does not always end in bliss.
Some new company staff might find themselves forced to perform the dangerous ikki ritual, which means emptying their drink to the last drop instantly and without delay. No sipping. The ritual sometimes ends in hospital for the respective participant.
According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, within 18 days during the 2004 hanami season in Tokyo alone, 152 individuals were admitted to hospitals because of acute alcohol intoxication.
The cherry blossom period lasts for only about two weeks, but for the Japanese, the lure of this season lies exactly in its short-lived nature.
During the Middle Ages, Japan's samurai warriors particularly identified themselves with the fleeting beauty and fragility of the sakura as a symbol of their own lives.
Kamikaze pilots during World War II adorned themselves with sakura flowers before they plunged their bomb-laden planes onto Allied warships in suicide attacks.
The lives of the cherry blossoms can, likewise, be brief. It only takes a brief spring rain to cause the flowers to drop to the ground and wilt.
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