Sunday, April 21 marked the 52nd annual Cherry Blossom Festival and Parade in San Francisco, and your Berkeley-Sakai Association once again made its presence known!

As in prior years we joined forces with the Oakland-Fukuoka Sister City Association to march in the parade (Thanks so much to them!!).  It is about 1.5 miles long going from Civic Center to Japantown.  All along the route there were people cheering, waving, and taking photographs.  Everyone had a great time.

This is also Berkeley-Sakai's 52nd anniversary, so it could be that they started the festival for us!!  We had a 43 year span of exchange students present.  And this year the weather was perfect - not too hot and a steady wind to keep the fish kite flowing well. 

The Berkeley-Sakai walkers this year were:

Kate (1973) and Robin Lucchese (1975)

Brad (1975), Claire (2016), and Colleen McCullough

Jay and Elah (2016) Sordean

So thanks to the Oakland-Fukuoka Sister City Association for letting us walk with them again.  They had several students in their group, representing both their middle school and their high school exchange, as well as a lot of adults - maybe 25 in total?

Click the image below to see a slideshow of pictures from the Parade.

2019 Cherry Blossom Festival