Sakura Ground Zero

I’m lost.  There is a tree out my window.  The petals area already full-flashing white, extended.  But the green leaves that follow the petals have already made their way out into view, as well.  Normally I would triumph the green.  But there is a sadness here, when green begins to overwhelm the brilliant white of the blossom petals.  The white that yields to green.  This is the undeniable wind down of the sakura season.   I must have missed most of the grand show. 

Someone looking out the same view suggests that the tree I am seeing is a plum tree and not a cherry tree.  The cherry trees have yet to peak, you see.  Plum blossoms always come a few weeks earlier. Oh.  That’s very different.  That means it is still very early.  This is an umei and the sakura is all pending.   Outside, in front of the hotel, I stand beneath a tree that is panting white radiance.  There is no green.  “You are here at just the right time.”

Later I went to sakura ground-zero.  I did not go to Naka Meguro to see the cherry blossoms.  Friends live there, right off the canal and we’d long since planned to meet.  Arriving I got spun around and walked off in just the wrong direction:  “Where’s the canal?”  One more block from here?  No.  This can’t be. Turn.  Phone.  Confirm.  OK.  You are moving in the wrong direction.

Cross the high street and now I am on the canal.  It is full of nighttime cherry blossom gazers.  The trees?  They are resplendent.  Surely this explosion of white for tree after tree is worthy of consideration.  I hear so much Chinese spoken as I dart along the canal, weaving in and out of people.  Ever more Chinese tourists of means, rather than simply migrant workers, can only auger well for Sino-Japanese relations.  Some are used to veering right, some are used to veering left and it is all a big mess trying to walk along through the crowds.  I’m late and I’m not moving with much of any rapidity.  People are on the side of the canal and selling wine and snacks.  I wish I wasn’t in a hurry.

Standing beneath a brilliant white tree, in the dark evening time I take an improbable picture.   And then another.   So does everyone else.