>>> Item number 28024 from WRITERS LOG9404A --- (98 records) ----- <<< Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 18:35:01 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: SUB: A Taste of Cherryblossoms This is a non-fiction piece for the newletter a local foundation prints. I should send it to them by the end of next week, so any early comments or critiques are welcome. tink ------------------------------------------------------------- A Taste of Cherryblossoms Copyright 1994 Mike Barker Late in March or early in April, Japan blossoms. This year, due to the vagaries of the weather, the Osaka-Kobe area cherry trees blossomed during the first week of April, just as the new employees of companies appeared in the trains, hallways, and coffee shops. The soft pinkish-white clouds turned the twisted dark trees and their surroundings into a festival for the eyes, even as the fresh clothing and laughing faces of the new employees lit up the sometimes grim business world. Monday evening as I walked to the train station from work, a car pulled alongside and the window rolled down. An arm waved and a grinning young girl's face called out "Konnichi-wa!" (good afternoon) Three young girls and the young man driving the car waved wildly, all smiling, as I responded. I couldn't place the faces, though. The next day when I went into a local coffeeshop where I often eat lunch, the mystery was solved as the entire staff laughed and told me that was them, returning from hanami (flower-viewing). It was their day off, but they had gone as a group to see the beginning of the sakura, the cherryblossoms. The master (chef) and waitresses thought it added just the right touch, seeing a favorite customer on the way back, and we all laughed at my confusion, then discussed the condition of the flowers. At this time of year, the daily concentration and barriers of rank are pushed aside as everyone talks about the cherryblossoms. How fast are they blooming, where and when are you going to look at them, who are you going with, the chances of rain stripping the blossoms from the trees, and the rest of the details of festive enjoyment of this once-a-year fleeting season are discussed everywhere. Families go as groups, young people, old people, office groups, all kinds and types of people go out to stroll under the cherry trees, eat, drink, and sing together, and enjoy the fragile blossoms during their brief time. Parks and other places where the cherry trees blossom are decorated with lanterns, lined with stalls selling food and drink, and blanketed with plastic groundclothes staked out by groups for parties. Some groups bring barbecues, coolers of beer or other drinks, and portable karaoke, booming songs in friendly competition with other groups. Others simply walk, or sit. In a few places, you still find people composing poems, performing tea ceremony, or trying out other older ways of celebrating the cherry blossoms reminding everyone of the return of spring. You also see youngsters laughing with delight, lovers gazing deep into eyes tinged with reflections of the blossoms, and photographers busily trying to capture part of the glory, posing people, twisting to get the right angle of sun and flowers, and greedily staring into viewfinders for a moment before pushing the shutter release, then dashing off to the next picture. During most of the year, the cherry trees are dark twisted trunks with a wide sweeping array of branches, not particularly attractive. Some, like those along the Philosopher's Path in Kyoto, may even be just a shell of a tree, leaning over and apparently ready to fall at the touch of a storm. Still, even the ugliest stump seems to put out at least a few short branches and cover them with delicate blooms during this season, and most of the cherry trees are almost invisible under the load of flowers carelessly pushed out and up along every branch from the newest to the oldest. This week, the local coffeehouse had a new worker who found everything fascinating. Even squeezing orange juice on the machine for a customer was exciting, drawing a smile and remark to another waitress, who laughed and said she wouldn't find it so exciting after a while. Still, the other waitress grinned and turned back to her work with a what I thought looked like a little extra happiness, even as I watched the new waitress turn to another new task. In the trains, the new workers are noticable because they are wearing new, fashionable clothes with a little awkwardness and extra attention. They are still likely to be looking around at the people in the train, or fiddling with their new briefcase. In the evenings, they are likely to form clots of nervous talking as they head for the new dormitory to change or simply go directly out drinking. Whether it is simply the shift from coats and winter clothes to spring dress or a response to the new clothing, it seems as though even the crowds who have been working are a little more carefully dressed, a little more lively, a little more wide awake as we peer out at the cherry blossoms in the morning or the evening now rapidly growing bright as spring lengthens the daylight. Once a year, Japan blossoms. The darkness and grimness of the rest of the year are colored and lightened by the season of sakura, when cherry blossoms bloom everywhere. That slow pulse of nature has its reflections in the business world, when the new graduates briefly bloom and lighten the offices and workplaces of Japan. Japan is one country where the idea of stopping to take time to smell the flowers, or at least to look at them, has been raised to the status of a yearly event. Those flowers and the season of sakura add a special taste to the Japanese spirit, a taste of cherryblossoms.