It is Hanami season in Japan, which means that cherry blossoms are fluttering in all directions. That isn’t some idyllic, poetical notion stolen from a slice of life anime or Animal Crossing, the pink blossoms quite literally flutter with every breath of wind (and Japan is a windy place). Patches of pink peak out of almost every neighborhood and little jewels of color cut through the steel and concrete cityscapes to draw the eye back to the cultivated beauty, nature meticulously cared for and cherished. And to top it all off, I live near one of the “three great gardens of Japan,” getting an even more stunning view from less than forty minutes away.
The garden I am referring to is the Kairakuen Garden, one of three sister gardens created during the Edo period (roughly 1603 to 1868) by the various daimyō (feudal lords) of their regions. These sister gardens “were created in the kaiyū (circuit) style, based around a central pond, that typifies the Edo period. People enjoyed the scenery while walking along garden paths” (“Japan’s Three Great Gardens”). While each of these is special in their own way, from both an aesthetic and historical perspective, the one closest to me happens to be in Mito City and is famous for its collection of plum trees (which were the only trees in bloom when I first arrived a month ago).
On Kairakuen Garden’s website, they state that the garden was created by “Nariaki Tokugawa, the ninth feudal lord of the Mito domain” and was named as such because it was “Nariaki’s wish to make it a place where he and his people could enjoy themselves together” (“Kairakuen – Three Great Gardens of Japan”). Like something straight out James Clavell’s Shogun, the garden is skillfully cared for and follows precise order and symmetry around the entirety of Lake Senba, leading to a peaceful circumvent to ease the pre-school year anxieties.
For those not in the know, Japan starts its school year around Hanami season, the start of the first semester coinciding with the newly formed blossoms. It is a symbol of rebirth, of new starts, and the birthplace of all my usual new school year anxieties times one hundred. The Japanese are a people whose culture has surrounded itself with the natural world, and while the onslaught of pan-globalism and modernization has uprooted some of the traditional belief systems, some of these more deep-rooted practices remain as sturdy as the four-hundred-year-old cherry blossoms.
Time, for me, has become a what the Tenth Doctor described as “non-linear, non subjective viewpoint….a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” On one hand, time is flying by so fast. I’ve already experienced my first trip to the biggest city in the world, gotten my first Japanese haircut, bought furniture for my apartment, and am preparing for the start of the new school year. But on the other hand, it feels like I have been in this country for ages. The struggles of adapting to a completely different culture and a completely different language wears on your mind. There is hardly any time for games or even free-reading these days, all of my spare time being ate up with language learning, figuring out how the post office works, paying bills in a foreign language, or reading the freaking back of a box of noodles trying to figure out how to cook the damn things. It is hard to believe it has only been four-weeks, but now that the first month’s hurdle has been hopped, the gradual homesickness has started to settle in, and the reality of my job follows suit.
This week, I start my initial meeting with my two high schools and the performance of my jikoshoukai (the self-introduction speech). I have been given zero directions on where to go besides the school itself. I don’t know where to park. I don’t know who to talk to. Besides knowing that I must take off my shoes at the teacher’s genkan and that I have to give a formal introduction to my principal, us ALTs have been left to fend for ourselves. At least at the high school level. Feeling the pressures beginning to mount, I felt that it would be the perfect time to take in a little natural splendor and try to reset the mind, focus on some fluttering petals, and do a little people-watching of friends and young families enjoying the fruits of the early spring season.
And I wasn’t wrong. What an absolutely relaxing and enjoyable time it was.
To start out, I decided I wasn’t going to drive to Mito City. While I am growing more confident in my “wrong side of the road” driving abilities by the day, the super narrow streets of Japan and unfamiliar roadsigns still intimidate me. And parking in this country can be a straight up nightmare. So, I opted for the quiet simplicity of a train ride and a short hop / skip from the station to the Sakura River. This cherry blossomed lined waterway is rather shallow and ate up with old brush and bits and bobs of trash here and there, but it is a direct pathway to the Kairakuen Garden.
All walks of life were out and about on this (seemingly) fine spring day: with teenage girls taking selfies with the cherry blossoms, their keychain riddled backpacks squeaking with each youthful chuckle; high school boys lounging on the little stone steps lining the canal, obviously talking trash about everything and everyone around them; young families having a picnic; little toddlers in jumpsuits begging for their parents to pick them up while their parents try to capture the perfect family photo; or the older gentleman enjoying a board game and a beer on little camping stools propped up under the budding thoroughfare. It was a slice of humanity completely unlike the things we have back home and the little human moments of it all gave me a joyous smile as I wandered the lake itself.
But of course, if there is a common refrain on this adventure, is that beauty must go hand in hand with something a little bit darker. This time, however, it was quite literally rainclouds. Out of nowhere. I check the weather every day and they were one hundred percent not supposed to be there. And then the lightning started. And then the rain.
I wasn’t the only one caught unawares it would seem, as about ten different people all sprinted for shelter from the rain beneath a bridge on the opposite side of the lake from Mito City. Here, I waited in companionable silence with two older gentlemen, a teenage couple, two middle-aged couples, and a mom and her son, avoiding getting thoroughly soaked thanks to the grace of good concrete infrastructure. But unfortunately, the weather report said this rain wasn’t about to let up anytime soon, and I thought I spotted a restaurant within a quick run’s pace.
Word to the wise, trust no building that promises sanctuary. It was closed.
I spent the next twenty or so minutes desperately trying to find a konbini or a 100-yen store to buy an umbrella, but the nearest one wasn’t that close to the park. And by the time I got to the store and finally bought some protection from the rain…guess what? It had stopped. Sunshine and rainbows. Perfect.
If there is a moral to this story, it is that you should invest in a travel umbrella when you come to Japan, because the weather system here is highly unpredictable. But I will admit, even with the darkened skies and the wet clothes, it wasn’t such a bad journey out. If nothing else, my first real Hanami will be one that I won’t soon be forgetting. Let’s just hope the sudden storm wasn’t supposed to be some kind of harbinger or omen for how this following school year is about to play out.
So let’s end with some quick etymology:
Spring. Noun. According to Etymonline, it’s meaning comes from the Old English verb form springan which meant “to leap, leap up, jump,” later becoming springen in Middle English. This verb form later took on the noun form in the early 14th century as “springing time” or the time of the year where “plants begin to rise and trees to bud.” This shortened to “spring of the year” in the 1520s until it was just simply spring in the 1540s. The word has gone through little transformation since then, but something to note is that the word eventually made the Old English lencten and the Old French made English printemps both obsolete words (or at least irregularly used in English (“Spring”).
Works Cited
“Kairakuen – Three Great Gardens of Japan.” Ibaraki Prefectural Government, https://ibaraki-kairakuen.jp/en/language/. Accessed 13 April 2025.
“Japan’s Three Great Gardens.” Nippon.com, https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00672/japan%E2%80%99s-three-great-gardens.html. Accessed 13 April 2025.
“Spring.” Etymonline, https://www.etymonline.com/word/spring. Accessed 14 April 2025.