Ah Cherry Blossom, Cherry Blossom, Cherry Blossom

The cherry blossoms are really beautiful in Tokyo now. Maybe this weekend will be the peak and next weekend they will be gone. The reason why Japanese love cherry blossom so much is because the life of them is very short. It would be related to our Mono no Aware feeling.   Many cerebrated poets made a lot of poetry about Cherry Blossoms. Especially Saigyo Houshi (Waka poet) who is well known as one who really loved Cherry flowers.  This is his famous poem.

願わくば
桜の下にて春死なん
その如月の
望月のころ

Negawakuba
Hana no moto nite haru shinan
Sono kisaragi no
Mochidzuki no koro

This beautiful blog translated it like this.

If I have my wish
I will die beneath the boughs
laden with blossoms
Spring, the night of the full moon
second moon of the new year

I think this and this English site would be good to understand these feelings from the point of view of foreigners.

By the way! I will have Ohanami Party (Cherry blossom viewing) with my friends tomorrow. I won't have time to cook Ohanami Bento, but I think we can buy some special foods at the market and I would love to get some Japanese sweets and special cakes too. And of course a lot of alcohol :-). (ah I wrote the same thing last year...orz) I seriously started thinking maybe it would be difficult for me to live in Texas because of this law, he he he. I think Japanese people aren't embarrassed to be drunk in public, and I don't have such a bad image of drunks. Do you remember this article I wrote before? It's ludicrous but many would read the article with a wry smile, it would not be 100% of antipathy or annoyance.

Actually you may find many drunk people in public in Japan. For the Japanese, it is a common scene. But for North American people, it would be unusual and funny. And there are some "drunk Japanese collectors". This guy has many good posts about drunk Japanese, here, here and this is funny "drunk standing sleeping".

This is links of Cherry Blossom LIVE camera in Tokyo. Please check some. You will see the great pink world.

Comments

[Mehyar]

Mari, Greetings

Thanks for the post. I also like Kyoto's cherry blossom forecast page..
http://raku.city.kyoto.jp/data/cssys/bulletin/sakura2006_e.html

Wonderful the way they categorize each stage of the flower's life with terms such as..not yet, still too early, or still in bud.

I will be in Kyoto early next week and hope to catch this year's cherry blossoms.

Best wishes

[Marco Bresciani]

I love this! I have a wonderful desktop background image with a nice and huge cherry blossom tree and a temple and Mt. Fuji!