“Would the mountain cherry blossoms
Return my affection
For there is no one here 
Beside me”

– Ogura 100 Poems, Abbot Gyoso

It’s actually long past the sakura season now, here in Japan. There are ajisai (hydrangea) popping up everywhere, blues and violets and deep magenta soaking into the light green base that’s like a blank canvas. Before that (and after the sakura), it was azaleas. Flowers here roll in, synchronized and strong in number, only to all die at once, which gives me the sensation of someone witnessing the outcome of a famine. Well, except for the sakura. Everything about them is graceful, even their demise.

I’m not much of a flower person – I prefer observing animals, prefer receiving books, but the cherry blossoms here truly had me captivated for as long as they remained. When they bloom, it’s like a sudden onset of pink snow. It changes the everyday scenery into something else. I’ve never known that from a kind of flower – only from snow and the brilliance of leaves in the cusp of autumn.

They bloomed constantly – and when some were fully stripped, others began late. The petals are tiny and fall one by one, covering the streets, the fields, the river. Walking one day I came across hundreds of them floating upon a pond, alongside leaves, dirt, and a mallard bobbing through it all in search of something to eat. What a strange and pretty mess, I thought.

The sakura carry a lot of symbolism here – the fleeting beauty of life, the beginning of a new love, a fateful encounter. All schools have a cherry tree planted outside of them, and it’s part of why it would be hard for Japan’s school schedule to change in order to mimic other country’s – the graduation of the students, along the falling sakura, is part of their culture.

These pictures are from when I went to the river back in April. Many people were gathered around to hana-mi (flower-watch). They set out mats and drank together, picnicked. Newborn babies were taken by the trees, hoisted up and had pictures taken of them. “Your first sakura!” the families exclaimed to the babies. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

I run at the river, so I was able to enjoy the sakura everyday for a long time. Sprinting past the trees and watching the petals spiral past me on the wind, my body felt so light. On other days, I’d walk slowly, and snap pictures of them with my cell phone. I’d often think of who I’d like to send them to – then would stop and for a while, reflect on and appreciate how much better it would be to have those people here with me, under the cherry trees.

I watched this old man paint in the river, grass, and river all that week. Then I realized he’d been waiting for the cherry tree to bloom to draw in the petals.