This is the oldest cherry blossom tree in the world right now and
this cherry blossom tree went to space.
Okay, so I've just arrived at Otsuyama Jisso-ji. Originally, I only planned to
come here because I wanted to see the biggest and oldest cherry blossom tree in the world,
but there's a story here that I just can't wait to tell you because it's blown my mind. So,
I'm kind of out in the middle of nowhere in Yamanashi, like very, very countryside. I
don't know why I just wasn't expecting there to be that many people here, but it's very, very busy.
And there it is, the space Sakura. So, the story goes back in 2008, there was a Japanese astronaut
named Koichi Wakata, and he was going up to the International Space Station with NASA. So,
with him, he took over 200 cherry blossom seeds from 14 different areas all around Japan,
and some of those seeds were from the oldest cherry blossom tree alive. So,
he went up to the International Space Station, he was up there for about eight months, when he came
back down to earth, he gave a lot of the seeds to a research lab, but then the rest of them
he pretty much returned them back to where they were sowed from so they could be planted again,
including this place right here. But then some very strange things started happened.
So, normally after you've planted a cherry blossom seed, it'll take a full 10 years before it even
starts to bloom. So, you could imagine everyone's surprise when the space Sakura started blooming
after only four years of growing. Another very weird, strange phenomenon that started happening
is normally this variety of cherry blossom only has five petals per flower, but this tree has
six petals, and nobody knows why. It's very difficult to see because it's quite far away.
I don't think I can personally see any flowers with six petals, but I will take their word for
it. I just noticed something else that I read about online, is that normally the flowers will
be kind of facing up towards the Sun, but these flowers are all facing down. Very strange, and
still nobody knows why. A plant physiologist said that "one guess could be that exposure to stronger
cosmic rays accelerated the process of sprouting and overall growth, but from a scientific point of
view, we can only say that we don't know why." So, I guess this tree is now about 14 years old. Uh,
I don't know what I thought like a 14-year-old cherry blossom tree would look like, but this
is much bigger than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be like tiny,
piddly, just a few flowers left kind of tree, but no, it looks very healthy, very, very big tree.
One of my favourite facts about this story is that it actually wasn't even conducted really for
scientific purposes. It was more just like a fun way to get kids interested in Science and Space,
to teach them how to sow seeds, and then just to see what would happen if they sent the seeds to
space. But because it wasn't really scientific, there wasn't any control that they did,
so they can't really say for sure. It's not like an official scientific experiment, but from what
we can see from this variety of cherry blossom tree and other seeds sown from the same plant,
yeah, the results are obviously very abnormal. There were some experts that were skeptical of the
results, saying that it could have been pollinated by a different variety, which is where the flowers
are unusual, and that there could have been other factors in place to explain their early blooming.
But personally, I like to believe that the space Sakura will forever be a mystery. But aside from
space Sakura trees and mysteries of the universe that we'll never know about, this cherry blossom
tree is the oldest and largest sakura tree in the world. You know, I'm not gonna lie, I kind
of thought that it was going to be like still the largest cherry blossom tree, like living,
but I guess it was the largest cherry blossom like back in the day. Now it's just the oldest.
That is a thick trunk, though. Very thick trunk. It's called Jindai Zakara, which just translates
to Giant cherry blossom tree. It stands at 10.3 meters high, and they don't know exactly how old
it is, but it's estimated to be between 1,800 and 2,000 years old, which would make it the oldest in
Japan and maybe even the world. Yeah, it says here that it used to be a lot taller and a lot wider,
but then it sustained damage in recent years because of changing environment and things
like that. So they're trying their best to prop it up with all these big sticks and keep it all
bound together so that it doesn't split any further. It's still incredibly impressive.
How is mochi so so good? I don't understand. So, my brother came to visit Japan the other day,
the first time we like, we walked past the cherry blossom tree and he just goes, "Oh,
this is nice," and he goes *pick* and picks one of the blossoms off of the tree,
and me and Chris were just like, *gasp* "What have you done?" But that reminds me,
the other day, Chris and I were in the park just taking photos - I know, adorable. We were taking
photos of this old man just sitting on a bench. He looked really cute and lovely. He gets up and
grabs a whole bunch of cherry blossoms off the tree, and he just starts eating them. I snapped
a bunch of photos for proof because I was like, "No one's gonna believe me if I tell them this."
You know, space mystery cherry blossoms, and like the largest cherry blossom, oldest cherry blossom,
whatever, all of that stuff aside, this temple, this park, the area, it's so, so,
so lovely. Like my whole drive here, I drove here from Osaka yesterday, and it was a very
long drive, but the whole time, I just wanted to stop the car so many times because there are
so many incredible cherry blossom spots. It's just the best time of the year." This morning,
I went to see a cherry blossom tree that I've been wanting to go to for a very long time. I
finally ticked it off my list. It's called Sakura Wanitsuka. I ended up staying overnight in the
parking lot. The parking guy said, "Yeah, you can stay here, that's fine." It was an okay sunrise,
but it was just like one of the most beautiful cherry blossoms I've ever seen in my life,
and the fact that it's sitting by itself up on a hill just makes it look even bigger. It's
surrounded by all these beautiful tulips, daisies, I don't know what kind of flower they are.
And now, I don't have too many solid plans for the rest of the day. All I know is that tomorrow
morning I'm going to be meeting Pat Kay for a sunrise thing so I just have to be near
Mt Fuji at Sunrise. Maybe I'll sleep in another parking lot again, that seems to be my new thing.
And now I get to go see Mount Fuji with cherry blossoms!
It has been a good while since I've done like a sunrise shoot, you know, like planning to wake
up and hike up some stairs to see sunrise at a particular spot. But this is the spot to do it.
Like normally for sunrise, there's not really many people here, but it was actually very,
very busy this morning. So busy that they didn't allow tripods here. They asked us to put tripods
away because there are too many people. Oh, and also Pat Kay is here, with a whole bunch
of other photographers and videographers, and people from Sony. My hands are so cold. It's freezing.
"How's the new camera?" "Oh, it's really good,
yeah. The usability is really nice. This thing is actually...oh my God,
the switch is so easy. It is a lot easier than the wheels." "Oh, he's got a Sony jacket on."
Thank you so much for watching this video. I really hope that you enjoyed this little deep
dive that nobody asked for. I think I'll be doing a lot more of these moving forward because there
are just so many interesting things in Japan, and I'm really excited to show you them. If you
liked this video, then you're really going to like the playlist that you'll see on the
end screen in a minute of my previous deep dives that nobody asked for (ADDNAF). Just a reminder,
I still have spots available on my Travel-With-Me trip. It's coming up
in August. There are two trips available with these dates here. We're going to be
doing a lot of hiking, a lot of outdoors, a lot of seeing temples, walking around,
sightseeing markets, night food, all of that. There's quite a lot of things that we're doing,
and I really think you're going to love it. So, if you'd like to come on that trip, I'll leave
the link in the description down below for both of them, and that is all. Thank you so much. If
you like it, like it, if you want to see more, subscribe, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye.