Hana Me

It's cherry blossom season. To properly partake in an age-old Japanese tradition, we trained down to Himeji to view the trees near the castle. We secured a spot under a non-cherry tree and chowed down on some sandwiches. We also joined in the lovely public drinking that the Japanese love. No open-container laws makes Hanami [flower viewing] all the more poetic ;)

There were also various performances- taiko drumming, koto [?] playing, etc. The whole area had been wired for sound, so we could hear the playing despite being pretty far from the stage. We bugged out after an hour or so... Too many people, not enough space. Pretty common problem here in Japan. We settled farther away, browsed the vendors [mmm, freshly pounded mochi, tasty!], and broke out the reading material. Ran into quite a few JETs, chatted a bit, overall had a nice day.

So how were the cherry blossoms? Well, they are pretty, but I don't find them awe-inspiring. Plum blossoms have better color and actually have a fragrance. Part of this has a lot to do with UW. The quad is lined with 30 Japanese cherry trees, so I had plenty of flower viewing during my time at Uni. And so can you! If you don't live in Seattle, you can check out their almost live Cherry Cam! And yes, the cherry blossoms look just like the ones over here.

http://www.washington.edu/uwnews/homepage/cherry/cc2006.html


Cherry Cam... brilliant.

Sad thing about UW Japanese cherry trees and Japan Japanese cherry trees .... no cherries, just blossoms.