Japan’s Cherry Blossom Viewing Parties | Hacker News Reader

Japan’s Cherry Blossom Viewing Parties

worldsensorium.com

64 pointsdnetesn31 comments

> people take a moment to appreciate the brevity of spring and its beauty, with the blooming and falling of cherry blossom.

Nah, it's an excuse to get out of the office and get plastered.

Here's a popular haiku that's for some odd reason usually not covered by literature professors:

  酒なくて
  何の己が
  桜かな

  Without sake
  what is the point of
  cherry blossoms

Exactly. Sure the blossoms are beautiful but the #1 reason is to spend a day (or night) drinking with your friends.

I have done viewing parties with my friends where we have gotten extremely drunk (at Takada park where the header image is from, coincidentally), and have also done trips with my family and family friends where no alcohol was consumed. All were wonderful - although sometimes the crowds are a bit bigger than I would like.

> sometimes the crowds are a bit bigger than I would like

I think that's really metropolitan Japan in a nutshell, lol.

True, but I was actually referring to the countryside! I live near a large-ish park that is very peaceful and quiet all year, but when the cherry blossoms bloom it gets so crowded that it’s almost unrecognizable.

Metropolitan Japan is indeed on another level, though. I once visited Ueno Park while the cherry blossoms were in bloom and it was just a sea of people. This was pre-covid, and I still found it a bit gross. Still had a great time that day, though!

On the flip side, when I first saw Ueno park I thought it was incredibly ugly and barren. Then when the cherry blossoms came it was completely transformed overnight. I didn’t stay through until Summer to see the full season, but the park definitely wasn’t worse with the cherry blossoms, despite the people.

What makes it extra annoying is that Japan is a collective culture which means that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.

But maybe it's also a human thing. My own country has a long coastline yet everyone seems to single out one single beach where everyone congregates.

Most people don't do things because they like them, but because they enable their relationships with other humans - so they can talk about something with them, compare their experiences, etc etc. This really is the conceptual basis for mass-culture; in Japan they've just accepted it a bit more openly than elsewhere.

This is like beach season in South Korea. June 30th, Haeundae is deserted and has a few people looking around. July 1st hits and it is completely packed until Aug 31. Then Sept 1 hits and it is deserted again.

> it's an excuse to get out of the office and get plastered

Yes.

Visitors to Japan noted the go-out-and-have-fun focus of cherry-blossom viewing more than a century ago: “The foreigners are there for no other purpose than to see and enjoy, while the natives are ready for the first excuse to picnic. They are devoted to excursions, so the little men close their shops, and the little ladies gather the children, and, with the last baby on the mother’s back and the next one strapped to an older sister, they all clatter away to Ueno, where the daintiest shades sweep the air. They wander along the highways, and thousands of clogs resound by the banks of the Sumida, where the branches sweep off to the river, where the pleasure-boats ply the stream. The roadways are dense with the crowding, surging masses, all kindly, all sauntering leisurely, where venders of foods and of toys are making a harvest.” [1, 2]

The trees can indeed be magnificent, but I prefer to look at them where parties are not allowed. I used to go to Shinjuku Gyo-en [3], which is conveniently located in central Tokyo. The last time I was there, at least, it did not allow picnics, so it was relatively uncrowded. In recent years, I have enjoyed the view for a few seconds each morning from the front car of the Toyoko Line train when it makes a brief stop over the Meguro River at Naka-meguro Station [4, 5]. It feels like you’re floating in an ocean of blossoms.

[1] https://archive.org/details/womanaloneinhear00fishiala/page/...

[2] http://gally.net/jatsi/nature/flora.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Gyo-en

[4] https://tokyo23.asia/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/nakameguro00...

[5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/tokutomi/26124371626/in/album-...

A lot of the cherry trees planted in Japan are clones, which causes synchronicity - the cherry trees in an area are grafted from a single, best tree found there, and thus bloom at the same time for the same duration, more or less. (At least that's how it's commonly understood, I don't know about the exact science into that.) That, I think, makes the blossom feel more short-lived than a non-synchronized blossom.

At a poetic level, the insane amount of cultural importance theoretically granted to observing cherry blossoms in Japanese culture, is awe-inspiring: millions of people grasping the significance of fleeting time, of the cycle of seasons, of celebrating nature, and ultimately, of the inevitability of death. That's an entire course of philosophical studies crammed into a couple of weeks, and repeated every year.

In practice, obviously, it's often just an excuse to get smashed; but I'd argue that it's a much more interesting excuse than some saint you don't know anything about or some superstition nobody remembers.

It would be nice to somehow transplant a bit of hanami culture to the West.

St. Patrick’s Day was originally a pagan holiday celebrating the vernal equinox, before being co-opted by the Catholic church. And I feel like it (the US version of St Patrick’s Day at least) still is fundamentally just a celebration of Spring - people feeling good now that Winter has passed and can’t help but celebrate.

People have layered on symbolism, and I agree that the Japanese interpretation is far more interesting than the US version. But ultimately I find any sort of symbolism to be rather dull compared to that feeling you get when Spring finally arrives. To me it really is primarily just about feeling good, and enjoying that feeling with family and friends.

I was in Japan visiting some friends many years ago. I happened to schedule a trip to Kyoto. It was April.

I wondered why all the cheap hostel rooms were taken, but sprang for a room at a nice local traditional hotel.

Then I explored Kyoto for a couple of days, wandering around canals and streets, visiting temples. It was so beautiful.

I had arrived during the cherry blossom season by pure, dumb, luck.

When I first moved to Japan (was there for 3 years) I thought, "okay, sure a bunch of flowers will be nice, but come on." Flash forward to my first spring there and going to I think Ueno Park in Tokyo first. I was completely floored at how beautiful and impressive a full peak bloom was (and a particularly good year I think too, with the weather timing). It really was something else to see in person in the big parks where you can just be surrounded by the flowers. And of course the never ending party of people coming to enjoy it.

I loved the flowers but it didn't sink in quite how many flowers there were until the petals started to fall, and made 'snow drifts' around objects and in gutters.

Yes, the "flower storms" at the end of the blooms was one of my favorite things too. Beautiful way for them to go out.

A couple of interesting points to add about Hanami:

- At the popular parks in cities, you can pay a couple of students to set up your tarp in the morning and reserve your picnic space until your work group arrives. For a school-related group you’d just send a couple of junior people.

- Uber Eats will deliver to your picnic tarp.

> - Uber Eats will deliver to your picnic tarp.

Really??? I live in the inaka, so obviously there is no Uber Eats here and I can't try for myself, but if what you say is true... my mind is blown beyond words.

My favorite Hanami is at Meguro river in Tokyo[1]. You’re not allowed to picnic, you walk up and down the river (it’s one way on the pedestrian-only walkway in each direction), take pictures from the bridges, and get street-food and drinks from all of the restaurants, shops and street vendors. It’s most busy at night when it’s illuminated.

The image of "2018 Cherry blossom festival at Yoyogi Park" shows a very crowded place, which I'd consider nightmarish. I can't see that being conducive to experiencing many of the things mentioned in the article, including 'tranquility', 'sensitivity to things', 'appreciating nature', and the 'gentle excitement', surely there's something I'm missing or the author is missing here.

Perhaps their sensibilities are differently attuned but I cannot enjoy nature with the din of others of my kind around; or as another comment points out, this is just an excuse to consume alcohol - which would make a lot more sense!

Japan is more than the megalopolis. Obviously if you go for a hanami picnic in the city, particularly in the obvious parks, you have to expect crowds and a certain degree of rowdy and drunken behaviour. If you do the same thing in the countryside, or even in the more peripheral parts of the city, it's more about families. And if you want to be alone with the trees, you can go to a shrine - better if on the hills.

Looks like it's taken with a telephoto lens, which sometimes makes places look more crowded than they really are.

I agree that large crowds can be unpleasant.

But I think if you went early in the morning around sunrise, even Yoyogi would be pretty tranquil. Take a stroll around, enjoy the flowers and the nice spring weather, and then split when the crowds start to arrive.

Is Japan not open for tourism yet? Asking as someone in America/Canada.

I’m in the UK and I received a Visit Japan advert the other day. No guarantee the spending on Instagram ads is joined up with the entry requirements but it seems likely.

They weren't open as of last month, not checked recently.

This said, COVID cases are rising again around the globe (China and Hong Kong are particularly under pressure at the moment, and Europe will likely be in a couple of weeks), so I wouldn't plan long trips to Asia just yet.

They allow a few thousand people in every day (I think it's 7000 now or soon) with quarantine conditions depending on the country of origin. I'm not sure whether that includes tourists yet.

As of this month, the quarantine conditions are virtually gone if you’re vaccinated except for arriva from a few countries. But no tourist visas yet, and business visas need a compelling reason. Also note that the 7,000 cap includes returnees (both citizens and residents).

unreadable on mobile, it has like 2-3 words per line with half of the screen empty

Nah, just turn on reader mode. There, problem solved.

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