On April 24 and 25, people swarmed into Memorial Park and Quinlan Community Center to have a taste of Japanese culture. Three groups—San Jose Taiko, Watsonville Taiko Group and Chikaho Kai—showed off the beauty and energy of Japanese drums. Classical Japanese dancers, martial arts schools and music groups demonstrated how Japanese people celebrate and preserve their traditions.

The festival also featured a large koi fish display, a fashion show and more than 60 arts and crafts booths.

New this year at the 21st Cherry Blossom Festival was a tea ceremony at Quinlan Community Center. Influenced by Zen Buddhism, the Japanese tea ceremony is a very formal event involving many exacting steps. A tea practitioner must be familiar with the production and types of tea, calligraphy, flower arranging, ceramics, incense and a wide range of other disciplines and traditional arts in addition to his or her school's tea practices. And guests to a tea ceremony are expected to know the proper way of taking tea and sweets.

As always, festival was a big success.

Proceeds support the annual middle school student exchange program. Each autumn, Toyokawa students travel to Cupertino with their chaperones. They are guests of Cupertino and the Cupertino Union School District. Each spring, Cupertino seventh and eighth-grade students are chosen to visit Toyokawa, with their chaperones, in a similar exchange.