After a cold and rainy Saturday, the weather warmed and I decided to stroll over to my local park to see the cherry blossoms and see if my fellow neighbors would too.  I was astonished to see how my people were crowded into the park.  Families had spread plastic sheets all over the park.  Couple strolled hand in hand snapping pictures as they went.

There are some possible reasons why so many ventured out this year to our neighborhood park.  Metropolitan Tokyo but a damper on the hanami (flower viewing) parties in their parks, but our park is run by Edogawa ward.  There were no lanterns hung this year, but there were many more people.  Maybe they came out to the local park rather than hopping on the train to a bigger Tokyo park.  I also truly feel that with all the tragedy and stress people have been under today was a chance to escape it, and to welcome the beautiful little things that the Japanese take so much pleasure in.

It again gave me a lot of hope to see so many people out and enjoying the weather.  There is still a long way to go, but we are going there together, and Japan will overcome.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 10th, 2011 at 7:19 am and is filed under Photography Blog. 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.