Hanami

Olemme nauttineet sakurasta ensin mummun ja pappan kanssa Shinjukun puistossa ja sitten työmatkalla keisarillisen palatsin vallihaudan luona, luokkakavereiden perheiden kanssa läheisessä puistossa, työporukalla kirsikkapuun alla, Nummeloiden kanssa Kinuta-puistossa ja melkein missä tahansa viimeisen viikon aikana, kun Tokio on puhjennut valkoiseen ja vaaleanpunaiseen kukkaloistoon. Tälle nautinnolle on olemassa japaninkielessä ihan oma sanakin: Ohanami. Se tarkoittaa kunnioitettua (o) kukkien (hana) katselua (mi=verbistä miru, katsoa)!!

ROSA

Early blossoms - the inconvinient truth
(from Daily Yomiuri / Los Angeles Times)
Early again. As usual.

The beginning of sakura has been creeping up on the Japanese in recent years. This year's start was eight days earlier than the average in Tokyo over the last half a century, part of a pattern that many scientists here attribute to global warming.

For well over a millennium, the Japanese have made a sport of their collective anticipation of the annual explosion of pink and white sakura blossoms that marks the arrival of spring. The moment is more spiritual than botanical. The cherry blossom is a symbol of Japanese identity. The petal's 10-day span from glorious youth to wilting and inevitable death is seen as a metaphor for life's swift passage.

It is also an excuse for executives, students and stay-at-home moms to ditch work and throw daylong parties of singing and drinking under canopies of petals.

The sakura once bloomed in a monthlong wave that spread northward, culminating on the chilly island of Hokkaido. Their progress was tracked, informally for centuries — and since 1953 by the scientists at the Japan Meteorological Agency — with a care and concern normally reserved for the movement of typhoons.

But the official advent of sakura has moved up by 4.2 days since records started to be collected, Japan's Environmental Agency says. And the blossoms are coming out even earlier in the big cities, regardless of latitude: 6.1 days earlier in the six largest urban areas, according to the agency's data.

Tokyo saw the nation's first blossoms this year — at least as officially noted by the inspectors. The city of Fukuoka followed a day later, earlier than rural parts of the southern island of Kyushu.

Scientists say that's because the concentration of high-carbon fuel use in big cities makes urban temperatures higher than in the countryside.