As some of you may know, cherry blossoms are very much A Thing in Japan. From the end of winter to early spring, you can find pink EVERYTHING as sakura season begins. In fact, the famous flowers won’t bloom but for 1-2 weeks in the beginning of April, but you can enjoy sakura-flavored treats and sakura-themed goods for a solid 3 months.
I’m sure there will be more to come, and I should save this post for later…but here we are.
The snacks and postcards are from this year, but the sakura themselves are from last year. It’s still a little chilly for them now.
You’re seeing sakura koshianman, which are like steamed buns with sakura filling, a convenience store roll cake, a bagel with sakura filling and a dried (maybe pickled?) flower on top, and a Starbucks latte (actually just a regular soy milk latte, but the cup is appropriate for this post) and sakura donut.
The postcards are self-explanatory, but I wanted to point out the one with a dog and a large dessert. That’s sakura mochi, which I think is probably the most popular sakura sweet around here. It’s a cherry blossom flavored rice cake with sweet red bean paste inside, wrapped with a cherry blossom leaf. The rice cake is very sweet, while the leaf is salty/sour and compliments it perfectly.
Finally, the last pictures are from spring in Takaoka last year. It’s bittersweet to see them, since I won’t be able to share them with any American friends and family, even for my third spring in Japan. At least I can share them via the internet!
I’m hoping that the park will be open for hanami (cherry blossom viewing party) this year. For the past two years, they haven’t permitted people to gather in large groups at the park, but usually it’s common to have a picnic under the cherry blossoms, with dango and sake.
In other news, I’ve started the next book for my book club. It’s The Changeling by Victor Lavalle. I haven’t read enough to give an opinion on it.
I thought about going to see the Batman movie today, but I decided against it after seeing that the run-time is 2 hours and 55 minutes. Best save that one for a rainy day. Instead, I took a long walk in the park to see plum blossoms, visited a new coffee shop (the place where I bought the sakura bagel), and got sushi.
Those are the ハナミズキ (known in America as flowering dogwoods) I see everyday on my way to work. They always bloom before the cherry blossoms.
An interesting tidbit about dogwoods in Japan:
In 1915, 40 dogwood saplings were donated by the U.S. to Japan in the 1912-15 exchange of flowers between Tokyo and Washington, D.C. While the cherry blossom trees survived the ensuing sour relations of these two countries and are the main feature of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, all dogwood trees in Tokyo died except the one that had been planted in an agriculture high school. In 2012, the United States sent 3,000 dogwood saplings to Japan to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Washington, D.C., cherry trees given as a gift to the U.S. by Japan in 1912.
“Cornus florida” Wikipedia.
That’s all for now! More next week.
Alisa & a Visa 