Cherry blossom season in Japan is anticipated all winter long but when it finally arrives it is nothing more than a tease. A flush of pale pink blossoms emerges in flirtatious sprays and hangs around just long enough to evoke such deep longing in their admirers they will memorialise these blooms forever more.
Brides and grooms converge on Japanese gardens to have their wedding pictures taken amid the flush of blossoms, weeks and sometimes months before the actual nuptial date. Families spread tarpaulins beneath the vaporous blooms and set out their picnics, even though the wind is cold and a faint drizzle seeps from the sky.
Japanese visitors stroll beneath the trees, selfie sticks held aloft, their thumb-clicks casting in aspic (or in digital format, at least) that moment when the blossoms hold fast upon the stem for an endless moment, showing no intention whatsoever of ending their brief lives in an earthwards plummet.
Cherry blossom season is glorious. Soul-stirring. Wondrous. Life affirming. For, fragile as they appear to be, the blossoms' emergence is forceful, decisive; there is no stopping it. But they are unpredictable, too, for no imperial order can command them to emerge before they are ready to do so.
When the time is right — not a minute too soon — cherry trees hither and yon will erupt with blossoms clustered in miniature bouquets of the palest pink. Drab city streets will come alive with splashes of pink; featureless lots will tremble with baby blooms; carefully sculpted gardens will blush, on time and as planned, with clouds of frothy, tissue-thin buds.
The cherry blossoms are more than a mere beautifier, and perhaps this is why the Japanese hold them so dear. They signify in swift succession the beginning, the middle and the end. They convey in their pastel petals the brevity of life, the fleeting nature of our days, the urgency — and acceptance — with which we must live our lives.
Cherry blossom season is a kind of new year in Japan, a starting over, a washing clean of the slate and beginning afresh. But these blossoms hold in their very being the promise of death. 'With cherry blossoms, we start things over,' translates my guide, Jasmine, from a haiku. 'And we find beauty not only in the cherry blossoms but also in how they flutter to the ground.'
And it's from that fluttering that we can derive the most valuable of lessons: youth and