Now, the cherry Blossoms are at their best.
The flowering season is becoming earlier year by year.
When I was a student they flowered in early April.
As the financial year as well as school year starts in April in Japan, we used to welcome newcomers with giving parties under cherry trees.
Now, farewell parties for retirees or graduates are held under the trees.
Cherry blossoms tell us the end of the chilly, harsh season as daffodils do in Britain.
However, the cherry blossom season is as short as a week.
Further, they come out and fall all at once in the same district, since all the somei-yoshino tree, the representative species of cherry in japan, is a clone, meaning they all have the same parents, all planted by human, not naturally grown.
There is a large park in my neighbourhood, which has hundreds of cherry trees. In this season quite a few people come to throw parties under the trees.
This year, however, due to the virus pandemic, having parties under the trees has been banned in Tokyo. Some of the area has been barricaded.
Still, we like to go out to see cherry flowers.
That is because we want to see something unchanged amid this unsettled era.
