Gathering Traditions

One of the most beautiful things I have realised in the last couple of years, is that I can decide why and how and which world festivals I want to celebrate in my life. Realising this was also paramont to realising that I was, at some point, going to be able to choose how I brought my kids up (imaginary and hazy as the idea is) and was going to make a 'home' for myself that was not neccesarily based in the north of Cardiff. I think I can even remember when this realisation struck me - bouncing along in a bus somewhere on that long voyage of discovery that Mina and I took down South America, when we were eighteen. She was explaining how Advent worked for her and her family, and I still have the diary, covered in paint and postcards and pictures with a quick 'note to self' to make sure that I remembered future traditions that I liked, so that someday in my imaginery, hazy family or home I might celebrate them.

Since then I have become a collector of traditions. Thanksgiving is probably one of my favourite. Along with Guy Fawkes and Shabbat. Japan's bean throwing festival will probably be introduced slowly.

But, more than any other 'festival' I think hanami might even trump thanksgiving. Japan is a buzz with it right now. the plum blossoms have heralded the beginnnings of Spring. Japan seems naturally fasincated by the seasons. There's a reason letters (even formal ones) are supposed to start with a reference to the season, and hiikus must include a line of seasonal significance. The Shinto obsession with the intrinsic link between man and nature is truly embedded into Japan's soul.

The newspapers and television is full of photographs of the cherry blossoms on their way up the country, 'best viewing' spots, advice for what sake should be drunk this year. It is the anticipation of Christmas, without any of the commercialism. Even more special is the natural unexpectedness of the whole event. The cherry blossom lasts only a few days, and as much as the weather forecast and housewives attempt to, it is difficult to predict when exactly it will strike. The temporary nature of the cherry blossom makes them the perfect symbol of Zen and the changeability of lifel. I have just spent the last few hours settled in with my landlords being told over and over about how amazing it is when the wind blows and a flood of blossoms, like snow, fall like a blanket around you. "Nostalgia' was looked up specially on the internet as a word to describe the blossoms to me.

This year there is the added worry over how the strange weather of this year is going to affect the blossom. The japanese year is based around hanami. Golden Week (the only national week of holiday) is set for cherry blossom season. Graduation and the school holidays are all suppose to happen pre-blossom, so that the new start of the school and financial year can begin with the blossom, signalling new beginnings in the most vivid way possible. Trees, hidden and bare throughout the winter are supposed to appear from nowehere to burst forth pinks and whites. This has been the warmest winter on record, and the first time that there has been no snow in Tokyo in living memory (or so our japanese teacher and my landlady declare). The anticipation is thus laced with just a little bit of worry, which makes the whole thing even more frenzied.

The only problem I have with this tradition is that it can't be transported across the world to whichever place I finally choose to settle on as 'home'. Hanami is uniquely Japanese. But perhaps that is part of the reason that I like it so much.