Hanami

The Japanese love their cherry blossoms so much that they have a word for the act of looking at them. They call it "Hanami," which  means blossom viewing, and there is a whole lot of that going on right now. 

We didn't necessarily time our visit to Japan to see Japan's famed mega cherry blossoms, but man, did we get lucky!  We hit Kyoto at exactly the right time for the blossoms, and they have not disappointed. By all accounts Kyoto is a city of immense history, beauty, and character.  We're not sure what it looks like normally, but hundreds (if not thousands) of cherry trees blossoming all over the city really bring it to life.

We were told in Osaka that a chilly beginning to spring  pushed the blossoms back a bit and that we were just in time to see them open and reach their full glory. This certainly appeared to be true as the Osaka blossoms were just getting going when we were there. While pretty, they weren't all like "POW!" just yet. Just a few days later we found ourselves in Kyoto and blossoms "POWING!" all over the place.

Certain Kyoto sights are lit up in the evening as a special event and  to provide another way of looking at the blossoms. We spent 20 or 30 minutes Sunday evening at Kiyomizu-dera (a particularly stunning temple hanging over a cliff above Kyoto) standing with hundreds of people all crowded in anticipation of something.  We waited as the sun went down for some thing to happen - an announcement, fireworks, or perhaps a light show.  It got dark and nothing happened.  Well, not nothing.  Just not quite the something we expected.  The sun went down, it got dark out, and lights illuminated the surrounding trees. Cameras went off everywhere.  The hundreds of people had been waiting for the blossoms to get lit up as the first priority, the temple as the second.

Yesterday we took the Philosopher's Pathway and happily partook in more hanami. They should have a word in Kyoto for "temple viewing," too because there are so many to see.  Old temples, gold temples, shogun retirement villas, shrines, less-old temples, small temples, large temples, enormous temples, restored temples, and every type of temple or cool shogun-related structure in-between hide around every bend here.  We walked north to south on a wonderful route that took us by all manner of temples, shrines, gardens, neighborhoods, museums (though we went in only one - the fabulous, and free, Kyoto Handicrafts Museum) and cherry blossoms.  It was a wonderful walk, punctuated by a delicious and relaxing lunch of yudofu (a traditional Buddhist meal of tofu served in a boiling pot of water).

A few days in and Kyoto is living up to all expectations, in part because the cherry blossoms have showed up in full force and helped teach us why hanami is such an important part of the Japanese experience.