the 360-year-old Japanese stone lantern. During the morning of the festival's last Saturday, the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade travels along Constitution Avenue from 7th to 17th Streets, NW. For 16 years until 2015, the Sakura Matsuri-Japanese Street Festival (Japanese: ), the largest Japanese Cultural Festival in the United States, took place throughout the day along 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, near the route of the parade. However, the 2016 Street Festival will take place at M Street SE and New Jersey Avenue SE, near the Department of Transportation exit of the Navy Yard-Ballpark Metro station in the distant Capitol Riverfront area. The Street Festival's relocation became necessary when the Trump Organization, which will operate the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office Pavilion at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, negotiated a deal with the Government of the District of Columbia that requires a -wide lane on Pennsylvania Avenue to remain open to the hotel's customers and valet parking service except during major events such as presidential inaugural parades, thus leaving insufficient space on the Avenue for the festival's activities. In 2009, the National Cherry Blossom Festival introduced an alternative event to its lineup, with the debut of Cherry Blast, an underground-ish mix of projected art, dance performances, live music, fashion and DJs that took place in an empty (but festively decorated) Anacostia warehouse. (Most of the crowd was shuttle-bussed in from Dupont Circle.) In 2010, Cherry Blast II—the creation of artist Philippa P. Hughes of the Pink Line Project—moved to a storage warehouse in Adams Morgan, but still featured an eclectic group of local artists and musicians. The 2016 Cherry Blast took place at the Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square during the last Saturday evening of the festival. The event's organizers cancelled many of the events since 2020 because of concerns related the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Several activities have since been added to engage the community in the springtime celebration, such as Petal Porches, Art in Bloom, and Paws & Petals. Types of cherry trees Of the initial gift of 12 varieties of 3,020 trees, The Yoshino Cherry (70% of total) and Kwanzan Cherry (13% of total) now dominate. The first 12 cultivars presented were 'Yoshino', 'Kwanzan', 'Ichiyo', 'Taki-nioi', 'Shirayuki', 'Fugenzo', 'Ariake', 'Jo-nioi', 'Fukurokuju', 'Surugadai-nioi', 'Gyoiko', and 'Mikuruma-gaeshi'. With the exception of 'Yoshino', these 11 cultivars belong to the Sato-zakura group, a complex interspecific hybrid