Vikingess Voyages: Spring in Japan: Sakura Season and Hanami in Kyoto!

One quite particular thing about the Japanese culture, is how they like things that are pretty, but at the same time things that are fragile or fugitive, or in other ways imperfect. Perhaps that is why they like the sakura 桜 (cherry blossom) so much.. Every year the trees brings new and beautiful flowers, but the flowers only lasts for a couple of weeks, until their petals falls to the ground. If there is a heavy rain the long-awaited hanami might even get washed away along with the flowers. The sakura is a sign of spring, and Japanese people (as well as us foreigners) likes to gather in parks/shrines/etc to drink with friends and watch the pretty flowers. This event is called hanami, and it literarily means to "look at flowers" (花見). Like last year I have already been to a couple of hanami-events, and the pictures in this blog is from the hanami I went to with the Study in Kyoto Program (SKP)-students in the Maruyama-park (円山公園) behind Yasaka Jinja.

Compared to last year the sakura flowers bloomed really late, so I didn't get that many good shots this time. Anyway, thanks for reading my post, I'll be back with more soon;)

Sakura over a gate in Gion

One of the traditional streets in Gion

During hanami there are a lot of stalls where one can by small portions of different types of Japanese food, such as takoyaki, okonomiyaki, etc etc. Here is the stalls + the sakura