Normally, crowds would flock to parks to enjoy the splendor.

However, this year officials are asking people to refrain from organizing cherry blossom parties due to the pandemic.

Rupert Wingfield Hayes has More from Tokyo It's hard to overstate just how much Japanese people really love cherry blossom season.

It is called sakura here, and it is a symbol of Japan.

And it's also a sign for Japanese people that it is the end of winter.

And it's time to go out and enjoy yourself.

In the spring sunshine, you can see all the people behind me here, taking photographs, enjoying themselves.

It's also this year particularly poignant because we're coming to the end of a third wave of covid.

We're just coming out of 10 weeks of a state of emergency where people haven't really been able to go out and enjoy themselves.

But you can see from these orange fences here that people have been told there must not be any cherry blossom parties.

And normally, on a day like this, a beautiful, sunny afternoon with the cherry blossoms in full bloom, there would be thousands and thousands of people out under these trees with their friends enjoying themselves, eating and getting very, very drunk.

Uh, the Japanese government has said that must not happen.

For the second year in a row, Sakura parties, as they are called here, have been band.

And the reason is, although the covid rate here is coming down and has come down dramatically in the last few weeks, it is not low enough, and the government is still very worried that if people come out here and get drunk, there could be 1/4 way.