Sakura Celebration Comes Full Circle

We had heard the cherry blossom season was pretty big here, but I had no idea it was this big. To the Japanese, cherry blossom time is referred to as the sakura season, and it comes with quite a lot of hype. In a lot of ways the energy was very similar to Christmas season in the States. There's music on the radio singing about the sakura, the weather forecast tracks the cherry blossom front (sakura zensen), and people plan flower watching parties (hanami) to picnic and drink under the cherry blossoms. It is quite a time, and I can see why. The trees themselves are beautiful and there is about a 2 week span from when they initially blossom to when the petals begin to fall like pink snow. Along with the beauty the sakura trees represent, I also think it's somewhat of a rite of passage to spring.

Curious about this phenomenon, my wife and I joined our friends A & M from upstairs for a lighting ceremony at Tsurumai Park on the Friday of the first weekend that the sakura trees were in full bloom. It was Friday night after work so it was dark, but it didn't take away from the beauty, or the spectacle that had us all rather speechless.


We found a place to "picnic," but were quickly snatched up by some happy (and drunk) Japanese business men claiming they had a better spot and plenty of food and spirits to share with us. It was very fun. We met a bunch of guys, whom by the end of the night I had promised to go golfing with and exchanged business cards.



That was last weekend. This weekend, my wife and I heard Nagoya Castle was a prime spot for viewing the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms themselves were breathtaking, but I was more excited about finding the same image on that business card. So this is the construction job that guy was trying to tell me about...