Annual Viewing of the Cherry Blossoms With Sarah

Annual Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Viewing

Cherry Blossoms still in bloom across the street from Wooster Square at the end of April

I made my annual spring pilgrimage to see the cherry blossoms in Wooster Square a little late this year, almost a week after the actual festival. I think I've been visiting the park on or around the time of the festival for at least 4 years. I always meet up with my friend Sarah, who knows the lay of the land and we always have a walk and talk as well as both dressing up to take photos of one another with the blossoms. I had actually attended the Cherry Blossom Festival in 2024 with an outfit inspired by what I imagined a dryad living in a cherry blossom tree to look like, followed by my 2025 Cherry Blossom outfit which was a delightfully sweet style baby pink dress with sax (light blue) accessories and accents. This year I wanted to keep on theme with blossoms and flowers, but style myself a little Old School. 

Danielle wearing Rose Bustle Stripe JSK from Bodyline with ivory accents and pink/red accessories; Photo credit to Sarah

Up Close view of my makeup, headdress, and jewelry accessories

This dress is from Japanese brand Bodyline and is one of my oldest pieces. My acquisition of it even predates the navy printed rabbit dress (in the last blog post), and it's actual production date was probably in 2018 or something like that. It is considered a sweet style dress, but I always style it more classically with Chinese and other local indie brand accessories. I am wearing a long sleeve translucent ivory colored blouse from Miss Point, a darker ivory and white trim headdress from Junyvette, an ivory choker from YingLuoFu, a pink with red jewel bow pin from Alice Girl, long ivory colored bloomers that stop just at the upper calf (I have them peeking out on purpose), white and ivory under the knee socks with ivory bows sewn on, wine red tea parties from Sheep Puff, an ivory and brown cross body purse of a very small cello, and an ivory parasol.  I was also wearing earrings as well as several rings on my fingers. I also did a little makeup and was feeling 90's romantic style, so I made the emphasis on my custom darker lip color (two different colors mixed together), and blush. A bold lip and neutral eyes looks very sophisticated, Parisian almost. 

Sarah's layered 1950's inspired look

While I'm still dressing like a slightly older Victorian child, Sarah moves us forward at least an entire century to the 1950's. Believe it or not, we did not talk about what we were going to wear or colors or anything before we met up, but there are similarities. She is wearing a white peter pan collared blouse with strawberry buttons and a cherry neck pin over a pink skirt with strawberries printed all over it. Peeking from the strawberry skirt is a beautiful white cotton underskirt. She then adds black tights with red hearts on them, and cleverly adds this vintage looking chunky heeled Fluevogs that are pink, white, and silver. To repeat the red, black, and white again seen on the bottom of her coordinate, she ties in a bright red cardigan with knit in black stems with white cherries. Red sunglasses again repeat the black and red. She is also holding a raspberry to her lips in one hand, and wearing a pink and strawberry crocheted scrunchie on the other. Honestly, this does look like some Old School street snaps of early EGL fashion from the late 90's/early 2000's, especially with just taking things your already own and layering them together excellently to balance out color. The only difference is that the shape of the skirt, even in Old School EGL would be slightly different, and the blouse would have probably have been tucked into the skirt. 

Looking up with a closer view; Photo credit to Sarah

Now to be perfectly honest, I had missed the cherry blossoms in Wooster Square proper, but there were still some blooming across the street. So we went across the street for most of our photos for this blog post. But do you notice anything different about my look?

If you guessed that the pink bow with the red jewel was gone, you'd be correct. Somewhere between bending down and admiring some tulips and taking photos of Sarah, my pin had popped off my dress due to the cross strap interference of my tiny cello bag. It was a whole Thing of messaging Sarah and her husband the next day to recreate the photo evidence of when and where it was possibly lost and them visiting the location and successfully finding it hidden out of plain site in a bush.  So if you are taking photos just for fun, they can be used to find lost objects as well!

I'm pretty sure I had lost the pin just before I took this photo of Sarah; I liked how the far right tulips matched her outfit

This was also across the street from the park, but a completely different direction. I love all the dappled light! These are not cherry blossoms, but a different type of blossoming tree. Photo credit to Sarah

You don't often see the back of my coordinate in shots, but this photo that Sarah took has an amazing composition. The red shoes draw the eye forward towards the direction of the blossoms.

I loved this one of Sarah as well because she took her sunglasses off and it was a completely different feel

Another visually stimulating composition by Sarah that gives not only a sense of my outfit but the size and perspective of the park around me

Sarah found this painted cherry blossom complete with actual fallen blossoms on the concrete and we artfully placed our feet to interact with the shape and color; Photo credit to Sarah

Later Erik joined us as we were walking back from the park and Sarah had the idea to take this mostly in shadow photo of the three of us

No Hanami meeting is complete without a little food. It was getting a bit chilly, so I went back to my car to grab my outer wear so we could go to The Loop by Hachiroku and its adjoining Japanese grocery store, as well as Elena's on Orange, a soft serve ice cream shop exclusively offering green tea flavor that week. 

Enjoying some fried sweet potato care of The Chaser, a Daily Nutmeg sponsored coupon booklet for local businesses that Sarah and Erik each had so we got to try a free appetizer together at The Loop by Hachiroku

My $25.00 Japanese grocery store haul from Hachiroku's adjoining store. It is July and I have already consumed all of this, except for the Dorayaki. Did you know you can freeze fresh onigiri? (the green triangle). Sarah credits me with introducing this delightful food to her.

Standing in front of Elena's on Orange just before a sea of people formed a line down the block as it was apparently the last day of classes for Yale students that day

I would definitely go back to both the Japanese grocery store and Elena's on Orange to try  different flavors of their soft serve ice cream. The restaurant The Loop by Hachiroku is a trendy and modern fusion of Japanese food and other cuisines paired with different adult beverages. The location we went to (and there are like 4 different ones around New Haven), was known for their wine selection. I didn't indulge in the wine, and while I found my entree to be an interesting fusion and flavor, I did not think for a moment that it would fill me up like the way a 500 yen (~$4.50) bowl of katsudon and raw egg over a bed of rice with some fresh veggies did way back when I was attending Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan over 20 years ago.  Next time I'm in downtown New Haven, I'll be sure to get a restock on the vegetable dashi, soba noodles, onigiri, and black sesame crackers. 

All in all it was a fun and memorable time, from taking such lovely pictures to losing and finding my ribbon again, and of course discovering fresh and lovely imported foods and treats from Japan locally accessible and available.