Hanami

This hasn't been the best year for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) because it's been cold at night and cool and windy during the day. I heard second or third hand that the bloom was expected to start early, but it didn't -- at least, it didn't here in Tokushima.

Still, we've had two nice hanami, last night and this afternoon. Here, however, are a few pictures from various hanami over the past 7 years. Only the last two of the series are from this year, from this afternoon, actually.

Flower viewing parties go back over a thousand years in Japan, Korea, and especially China, but the custom probably didn't catch on in a big way in Japan until the Edo Era, the time of the Tokugawa shoguns (1603 -- 1868). It's only in that time of relative peace and prosperity (except for the occasional local rebellion or famine) that the Japanese merchant class started aping the aristocracy. Now everybody gets into the act, and if you have any sort of association with anyone -- work, family, club, school, gang, or whatever, you're likely to have a hanami with them. I think I went to about 7 last year, when the weather was more cooperative.

When I say the weather has been uncooperative this year, take a look at this picture from Kyoto at Wikipedia. That's what Kyoto was supposed to look like last weekend. Now look at the picture I took in virtually the same place:

Of course, some cherry trees are forwarder than others. The weeping cherry, shidare-zakura, bloom earlier than the usual yoshino somei.

The mountain cherry (yama-zakura) also bloom a little earlier than the yoshino somei, as you can see in the hills behind this museum, Dai Ku Mura. Dai Ku Mura commemorates Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was first performed in the adjacent village by German prisoners of war during World War I.