Sakura 2005
7-9 April 2005

Anybody who's anybody knows that this time of year is cherry blossom time in Japan. 

YOU knew that, right?

In Japanese, they are sakura, and going out to watch the blossoms in all their resplendent beauty is called hanami. Sakura are not just "pretty flowers" -- there really is some extent to which those blossoms represent the very essence of what Japanese consider "beauty" -- simple, organic, fleeting... sublime... 

Now, it needs to be said (though I blush when I do it, like somebody who tells a secret they're not supposed to know), but actually, for many Japanese, sakura season is REALLY just an excuse to go have a drunken picnic. I know this for several reasons: 1) several people have TOLD me as much; 2) on a Japanese news website, in their "man on the street" interviews about sakura, 6 out of 8 people mentioned drinking sake in their one sentence of fame (only 5 actually mentioned LOOKING at the sakura!); and 3) I also know this because you can NOT have been around the local hanami spots this past week without getting high on FUMES alone -- there was some SERIOUS drinking going on under those trees...

But anyway, for someone like me who is experiencing sakura in all theyz glory for the first time, it's incredible. 

. . .

Okay. These are a few of my photos -- I have taken hundreds, but I never failed to feel disappointed when, after a good walk around the neighborhood, I would return home to find that NONE of the images was able to convey just how beautiful it has been this past week. 

So, listen -- just imagine if I were a great photographer, and if you could really see and smell these places -- and if you can get it in your head that it's a THOUSAND times BETTER than these dumb photos... THEN, you might get some idea how amazing it is to be in Japan in springtime...