日本春の桜--Japanese Springtime's Cherry Blossoms

Around the end of March, the entire country of Japan begins to twitterpate. The weathermen start using a strange new map that looks like this:

These pink weather maps are not showing the patterns of the fabled Pepto Bismol showers. They are predictions of when the sakura (cherry blossoms) will be blooming in different parts of Japan. There are many folks in Japan who take vacation time to follow the progression of the sakura from South to North. They call it "Hannami" or flower watching. Luckily for us, the Izu peninsula is a Hanami capital in Japan. Thousands of people come from all over to Ito, Shimoda, Kawazu, and other destinations on our small peninsula just to sit under the trees, drink sake, write haiku, and enjoy the pinkness that surrounds them. It is truly beautiful, as the breezes tend to cause flurries of petals to fall to the ground, as if the countryside were having its own fertility parade.

Many of the sakura in Japan line roads and fields. A beautiful contrast to the pink of the cherry blossoms is the yellow of the rape blossoms. Rape blossoms are a form of canola, and are used as a rotational crop in rice fields.

One of the biggest Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festivals) is in Kawazu, on the southern part of the Izu Peninsula. Kawazu has a long avenue lined with sakura, right next to a river. So every year, the festival hawkers, food vendors, musicians, clowns, etc. line up along the avenue to celebrate the breaking of Spring. Japanese people lay out blankets and tarpaulins to sit on. They lie under the trees, take many close-up photos of the blossoms, and enjoy copious quantities of food and drink.
Here are a few shots of flowers from our springtime journeys through the Izu peninsula:
This is the river bank in Minami Izu.
A closeup of the sakura flower.
Lisa loitering under a sakura.
Paul frolicking in the canola.
Here is a video of Minamiizu's fields and flowers. (Note: this is my first attempt at making movies with soundtracks. I am so proud of myself! We had to remove the original soundtrack due to some serious trash-talking that was going on while Lisa was recording:).)


In addition to the sakura being in bloom, late March marks the beginning of a series of festivals culminating in the Golden Week holidays. On March 4th, Girls' Day is celebrated. In the weeks leading up to this festival, people decorate their homes and shrines in beautiful dolls made of paper, cloth, and ceramic. Ito City Hall has a lovely display of these dolls every year:


We took a drive around the Izu peninsula at the beginning of sakura season, and we managed to catch the former Prime Minister of Japan (Koizumi-Sama) outside a shrine in Shuzenji: As we came out of the shrine, we noticed an ebullient crowd of people had gathered, and they were all pointing and taking photos of this man:
Lisa and I had no idea who he was, but we knew that he was important, owing to the crowd and his pimped-out silk suit. We took the camera to some Japanese friends and asked them who he was. They shouted their excitement that we saw Koizumi-san. Apparently, he was a wildly popular PM in his day, and the Japanese call him the "Japanese Richard Gere." Can you spot the resemblance?

At any rate, Springtime is a wonderful time to visit Japan (although it's not as amazing if you haven't seen the other 3 seasons first). Most groups of friends and family go to or host Hanami parties, and there is a peaceful attitude in the air. The way they celebrate the flowers here seems to help illustrate why the Spring is associated with love.