Academic & Internship Coordinator, SCTI
provide information about when sakura will start blooming in each region of the country. During the one or two weeks when sakura are in bloom, people curse rainy, windy weather because it blows the blossoms off the trees. Some dessert shops have special sakura menus: of course, sakura-mochi (a kind of rice cake) is the most famous dish, but I had sakura-cheu cake and sakura-warabimochi (a jello-like kind of dessert) for the first time this year. (They were delicious!) In train stations, you can find sakura graphs, updated daily, that show the degree to which sakura are blooming (at half-bloom, full-bloom, etc.) at twenty different sites in Kyoto and the surrounding area.
Needless to say, the Japanese passion for viewing sakura is amazing. For many people, hanami, a sakura viewing party (often augmented with significant amounts of sake) is a must-do spring event. Kyoto has several sites that are famous for their sakura. One weekend I went out to Nijo Castle. I usually find a seat on the train from Osaka to Kyoto during my morning commute, but that day it was absolutely packed by people coming to Kyoto to view sakura. At Nijo, people were waiting in long lines for admission tickets to see its famous sakura. The area where the Center is located is also famous for sakura, so during the period when they are blooming I almost run over several people on my bike too busy staring at the flowers or concentrating on taking the best possible picture to pay attention to traffic.
Why do sakura hold such an attraction to us Japanese? Why do they mean to us? I know this may seem a silly question, and one with no single answer. At the same time, I recently came up with one possibility based on my own experience. Within my work year, the period of March through early April is the most stressful time. Every morning I wake up with a deep sigh, find a frown in the mirror, and am occupied with pessimistic thoughts during my 45-minute train ride. However, there is one special moment every spring. On the way to the office that morning I unconsciously stop my bike and stand still for a time. After a couple of minutes, I find myself feeling optimistic, positive, and recharged. It is almost like magic. It happens every year at the same spot - on a short bridge from which one can look over many sakura trees lining both sides of a small river. That magic moment is when I see the sakura blooming for the first time! The view provides me with encouragement for several weeks. Then, by the time that my most enjoyable work begins in mid-April, when the Stanford SCTI students arrive in Kyoto, the sakura are gone. I am not a very religious person, nor do I believe in Peter Pan, but I often feel as if a fairy or a spirit has flown down from the sky and told me, "Don't worry. Everything will go all right!" You might even say that if sakura didn't bloom in early April I might not still be at this job.
Recently I noticed that this magic might work on other people as well. This discovery led me make a key link with the sakura phenomenon: the beginning of the new year. In Japan, the school year starts in April. So does the business fiscal year. Since Japanese enter kindergarten at the age of four or five, we experience saying goodbye to friends and being put in a new environment in April - meeting new classmates, new teachers, new textbooks, new schools... As we get older, the changes become even more drastic. We leave our family to start a new life alone at college, leave our college to start a profession, or leave a familiar town to move to a new place, almost always in April. From the very early stages of our lives, whenever we face the sadness or anxiety brought on by these changes, sakura are always there.
This is one of reasons why I think Japanese show such an incredible attachment to sakura, not simply because of the nice view or for providing an excuse to throw a party. It comes from somewhere deeper: an instinct in us to seek sakura, because, whether we realize it or not, they have given us comfort and hope in critical points during our lives.
