For those of you who have not been lucky enough to travel to Japan (Go! You'll love it!), you may be unaware that the month of April is generally considered the time of 'hanami' - which literally translates into 'flower-eye'... but it's not meant to be taken literally.
Hanami means 'flower viewing' (that's the problem with direct translations!), but to the Japanese it means 'cherry blossom viewing'.
Like anything the Japanese put their collective mind to, hanami is quite the festive event - anything for an enkai (party), I suppose... and who can blame them - working ridiculously long hours for little pay (as an AET on the JET Programme, my salary was paid by the Ohtawara Board of Eductaion, and I made much more than the local Japanese teachers did with 20 years experience. I'm not apologizing for MY salary, I'm just pointing out how woefully underpaid the teachers were/are).
Since it is an enkai, offices take an evening off to gather the troops and spend some time in a park to look at the pink cheery blossoms.
Since parkland is at a premium in Japan (I think the plan is to one day pave it over), there is much jockeying going on to see whose party gets to sit under the most beautiful cherry tree. Some companies in Tokyo (or so I was told) make an employee go out early in the morning to stake out the best viewable tree before anyone else can lay claim to it. It is of so much importance that each company gets its own tree, that I have even had offers from people who want to sit under my cherry bonsai tree. But, because it's only about 11-inches tall, it will only take three or four Japanese.
Generally, the festivities begin at night. The cherry trees are covered in waves of gorgeous pink blossoms, that (over the next few months) I have never seen bear fruit. Companies decorate the trees with classical rice paper lanterns adding to the feeling of comraderie, that pours out as easily as beer from a bottle of Asahi Super Dry. Party members sit cross-legged on a blanket spread at the tree's base, and then everyone proceeds to get absolutely blotto with booze and wonder why the flowers look so blurry at this time of year (see image of my Hiroshige woodblock rint - Hanami is occurring).
April (not March) is also notorious in Japan for its blustery winds. These gale force zephyrs love to tear the tiny pink flowers away from their branches and puke them up all over the place were grass would be if there was any grass. Perhaps this is why people get so tanked (Yoparai desu - I'm drunk) at the hanami--it's so they can feel-up the office girls and pretend the blossoms are still on the trees!
"Oh wow! I see a lot of pink!"
"No, that's just Matsuda-san smurfing his beer all over the Suzuki party."
"But we work for Honda."
"Yes."
"Oh. Sugoi (nice)."
The winds are so strong that it has often bowled over some of the mini-cars (more often than not, these tiny cars have been marketed solely to women, and come in wonderful non-white colours - See HERE) if they have not been properly weighted down. Nowadays, at all Kanseki stores, they sell "The Konishiki", a life-sized replica of one of Japan's most famous non-Japanese sumo wrestlers (FAT BUGGER).
Mini-car drivers that fail to use "The Konishiki" or a similar 640-lb weight can lead to their vehicle being blown off into a rice field.
For me, I find it all quite amusing - as I once rode past an upturned vehicle. You should have hear the pathetic cries from within, "Bakayaro! (stupid idiot!), as the driver fruitlessly gunned the rotary hamster engine causing the wheels to spin comically in the air. Then, after I picked up the car and righted it, there was a chorus of "Hora! Gaijin-da!" (Look! A foreigner!). of course, they end up back on their back with the next gust of wind.
I've heard that every year several mini-car owners driving their wife's car have committed ritualistic suicide (hara-kiri) because they feared they would now be late for the kanpai (cheers!) under the cherry (sakura) tree and would have to explain to their boss that they were late because their car blew over and had to wait until a gaijin rode by on a bicycle to offer help because no other Japanese person wanted to get involved.
Somewhere tipping cars and drinks,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is by the punk group Black Flag: OWTCH
