Sakura

April in Japan is sakura season, or the blooming of the cherry blossoms. The Japanese take their sakura seriously. I hear that when the flowers first bloom, the major businesses in Tokyo send their lowliest interns to stake out a good spot beneath the trees. Then at night, everyone gathers together and drinks sake and beer until they are senselessly drunk. This festive tradition is known as yozakura or "night sakura". Sadly, I missed the yozakura, but I was still lucky enough to catch the end of the blooming season.

Dr. Gremillion drove me to a park at the top of the hill overlooking Kamogawa. I dutifully posed with my face beside a sakura branch, looking this way or that, while he took pictures and tried to capture a gust of wind and the falling of the sakura petals like snowflakes to the ground.


My attention was drawn to a group of mothers in the middle of the park, all sitting in a circle on yoga mats, stretching and meditating together as their young children wove in and out. (Dr. G tried to convince me to sit among them, as if I were on my own yoga mat, so he could take a picture, but I declined.)

There were several families and groups of elderly sitting on blankets and tarps with a full mid-day meal laid out in bento boxes. There were pairs of old woman lounging beneath the sakura sharing wine and sake. A tiny grandfather, hunched and weathered, tossed a soccar ball to his even tinier 3-year-old grandson. And a mother was walking beneath the sakura, infant daughter in her arms, hoisting the girl up and down, up and down, into the blossoming branches for her to appreciate their beauty. It was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed.