How I Learned to Love a Cherry Blossom

Hanami. An entire word created to express the very specific act of viewing cherry blossoms. Because, for Japan, cherry blossom viewing is the highest and most pure form of flower viewing, partly, I'm assuming, because the window of opportunity every year is so narrow. In Akita, I would say the peak cherry blossom viewing time lasted only about four days. Nothing had happened with the trees on Saturday. By Thursday, when the rain set in, the blossoms were all mostly gone. But for those few days, Akita really was glorious.

My hanami-ing was limited to an afternoon in Senshuu Park, the prime location in the City, and a day in Kakunodate, one of the main tourist destinations in the prefecture. Due more to coincidence than anything else, I saw Senshuu in all its glory on Monday, but by the time I got to Kakunodate on Friday, it was drizzly, and most of the trees were bare and had dropped their blossoms on the paths and puddles beneath their branches.

Apparently, it is good luck if you get hit by a falling blossom. In Senshuu, a blossom did fall on me, but I mistook it for a bug and tried to shoo it away. However, it still touched me, so I'm going to continue to think it was lucky.

Japanese have this idea that people need to look at trees during all seasons. Although I can understand hanami, because it doesn't last very long and we don't really have an equivalent in the States, hanami's autumn sister, fall color viewing, just never made sense to me. I'm from Portland. Fall colors are my life. I mean, they are pretty and all, but fall colors last a lot longer than cherry blossoms, and there isn't really the accompanying festival propaganda that goes along with hanami-ing. Cherry blossoms at least make an appearance on my Japanese visa, so you know they are a big deal. I've never seen "fall colors" on anything.

Anyway, hanami was pretty, though I was unprepared for how fleeting it would be and how at the whim of nature the event would put me. I will have a better mindset next year. Here's some pictures.

                                                   Senshuu Park on Monday

Kakunodate on Friday