Tigers and Cranes

It’s been unusually warm in the states, and although it may not seem like it, it’s warmer than usual in Korea and Japan this year too. That may mean earlier than usual blooming of sakura, aka cherry blossom. In America, many cherry blossoms have already done their blossoming thing, hardly noticed by anyone. I noticed, of course. Walking back from a Border’s with a medium coffe, no cream, i noticed all sorts of familiar petals on the ground, and lo! Sakura! white ones, at that. I stared at them, cuz, you know, they’re pretty and junk, and passersby looked at me as if i was daft.

In Japan, during the sakura viewing season, the whole country seems to go into a sakura frenzy, people usually talking about where and when they’re going to a sakura viewing at a park or whanot. i’m especially amused by weather forecasters detailing where in Japan saukra are blossoming.

They take this stuff seriously.

And it’s hard to not get caught up in the excitement, actually. And, i have to admit, although they’re just flowers on a tree, they are quite pretty, especially when gathered along a street and in groves of hundreds.

I recall being in Korea at about that time last year too, and incredibly, sakura, or bud-kkot, as it’s called in Korean, were in full bloom as well. I was astonished at sheer number and beauty of Korean cherry blossoms, and i pointed out all the pretty trees to my driver, whom just shrugged and said, “big deal, they do that every year.”

To Koreans, it seems, cherry blossoms are just bunch of short lived flowers. You can certainly tell the differences in two cultures there.

A little while ago, i posted about “matcha kit kat”, the green tea infused kit kat. That’s pretty cool, you know, but just as cool might be this sakura flavored kit kats. dig it, mang!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under food, korea, japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.