Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival and other San Francisco, CA Local Custom Tips

Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival is held on consecutive weekends in early to mid April each year (in 2007 it was April 14 & 15 and 21 & 22). The highlights of the festival are the Cherry Blossom Queen Pageant on the first Saturday of the festival and the Grand Parade on the last Sunday. In between these events you will find traditional song and dance, karaoke, arts and crafts, martial arts demonstrations and competitions, food bazaars, tea ceremonies, and much more. The main stage is at the Peace Plaza in the heart of Japantown and various buildings throughout the area (mostly along Post and Geary) host different events and displays.

The first Cherry Blossom Festival took place in 1967 and today draws 150,000 visitors to the area, plus 100,000 for the parade.

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Phone: 415-563-2313
Website: http://www.nccbf.org/
Other Contact: info@nccbf.org

Huntington Park is a small but beautiful open space at the top of Nob Hill. It is surrounded by Grace Cathedral, the Pacific-Union Club, the Masonic Center, and numerous fancy spas and hotels. The park features a recently restored 100-year old replica of Rome's Fountain of the Tortoises, a fountain donated by the local Flood family, a playground, numerous benches, and enough green space for the neighborhood kids and dogs.

We had a nice picnic here in July 2007, just blocks from out Union Square Hotel. On this day, Nob Hill was at the edge of the fog, with the clouds dissipated just as it got to the square, leaving us in the beautiful sunshine all day.

In 1872 one of the city's finest mansion was built on the lot the park now occupies. After the house was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, the owner (Mrs Huntington) gave the land to the city for the purpose of open park space.

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Website: http://www.nobhillassociation.org/HuntingtonPark.asp

Belden Place is home to San Francisco's Little French Quarter. Belden Place began its transformation from an alley to a destination in 1990 when Cafe Bastille was opened. Cafe Tiramisu opened in 1991 and Plouf opened its doors in 1996. The area also includes Sam's, B44, Voda, Brindisi Cucina di Mare, and Belden Taverna.

Each year on Bastille Day (July 14th) the alley is packed especially tight for celebration of the French anniversary of the start of the revolution which eventually removed their monarchy.

Claude Lane, off Sutter between Kearny and Grant also participates in this annual festival.

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Website: http://www.belden-place.com/

Marina Green is a favorite hangout spot for people from the Marina and Fort Mason areas of the city. This long flat area was swampland until the much of the rubble from the 1906 earthquake was used as fill. This area was used for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, but only the Palace of the Arts remains. After the world's fair, most of this area was built up with the houses you see today, but the Marina Green was kept as a park.

In the 74-acre Marina Green park you will see numerous people having picnics, flying kites, jogging, and playing Frisbee in view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Next to the park are the St Francis Yacht Club and the Golden Gate Yacht Club.

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Website: http://www.sftravel.com/mgreen.html

Held in May rather than February like the original Carnival, San Francisco's Carnival Festival is one of the Mission District's major events. The festival takes place on Harrison Street between 24th & 16th Streets along a nearly mile long stretch of city streets. We walked this mile of fun from one end to the other watching live bands, eating food, seeing crafts and other junk for sale, and seeing at least three stands advocating the legalization of marijuana.

The big draw of Carnival is the huge parade on the Sunday of the two-day event. I found that some locals didn't even know the festival actually began Saturday around 1100 AM. The event claims to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors, though there are no tickets or other ways to get an exact count. The 2008 festival is the 30th consecutive Carnival Event in the city.

The food we tried was excellent: carne asada tacos and chicken tamales for about $6 each. We also had some lemonade for maybe $4. Overall the festival was huge and well organized, with at least our stages all simultaneously playing music.

A fun little experience for the whole family.

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Website: http://www.carnavalsf.com/index.php
Other Contact: Harrison Street between 24th & 1

I've seen the massive celebration for Buddha's Birthday in Seoul, Korea, but I never thought I'd stumble upon a similar event here in the US. On May 25th 2008 the San Francisco area organizations called Buddha's Light International Association, American Buddhist Cultural Society, and Light of Buddha Temple held a nice little festival at Union Square.

Buddhism as a world religion is historically concentrated in East and South East Asia, particularly China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. The US has only 2 to 6 million Buddhists, and 75 to 80 percent of these followers are of Asian descent and inherited Buddhism as a family tradition (while the rest are generally non-Asian converts).

San Francisco has a very high Buddhist population. The 2000 census reported that San Francisco had an population of over 200,000 people from Buddhist Asian countries, which is about a quarter of the city. The largest ethnic groups in San Francisco from Buddhist countries are Chinese (160,000 people), Japanese (15,000), Vietnamese (13,000), Korean (9,000), and Thai (2,000).

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