blog

桜 (sakura) is Japanese for cherry blossom, an important symbol of spring time in Japan and, with it, a symbol of renewal. The cherry blossom is a beautiful fluffy and light flower which falls quickly off the tree with wind and rain, making it also an important representation of 物の哀れ (mono no aware).

Last weekend my family (including my aunt Mikako and Bailey) took a short trip to Yugawara (湯河原) at the base of the Izu peninsula. Last weekend was possibly the peak of the cherry blossoms this year, making it a very picturesque trip. It’s quite rare for the four of us to all be in the same place at the same time, so these photos are definite keepers:

One of my personal highlights was going down a slide at Azumayama Park in Ninomiya right through a grove of cherry trees in full bloom—it was so beautiful that I had to go back down it again and take a video! Unfortunately the Flash video encoding (or my camera) doesn’t do it justice, but I hope you can fill in the gaps with your imagination.

Cherry blossom slide - 桜のすべりだい（二宮吾妻山公園） from mitcho on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. Weekend in Osaka
2. 北京 Part 3: The Great Wall of China! and noodles
3. Midyear conference in Hualian and Taroko
4. Scav Hunt!
5. The (Shiretoko) Revolution Begins Now

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags: Bailey, cherry blossoms, family, fun, Japan, Japanese language, sakura, spring, video

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed (optionally with tweets from my Twitter)!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 1:11 pm and is filed under travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.