Adrift in Japan

Hanami

Yesterday the temperature in Sapporo reached 10 degrees Celsius for the first time this year. Today, it's snowing again, big fluffy white flakes that will probably be gone tomorrw. The snow is definitely on the decline here, although we're still getting new snow almost every day. Given the conditions, it was a little humorous when we turned on the English language translation of the news last night to find the Hanami Forecast for the rest of Japan.

"Hanami" is the Japanese word for "cherry blossom viewing," and is very important to the Japanese. They plan major festivals around when the blossoms will be at their peaks, and plan parties which can be ruined if they are scheduled for the wrong date. From watching the news, Matt and I can tell that Hanami is even more important than we had suspected. The length of time they spend talking about it makes it seem that people drop everything else in their lives to hurry with bento boxes to the best sakura blossom viewing places for picnics.

In case you think I'm exaggerating, let me point out that a specific portion of each news broadcast in the spring is dedicated to the forecast. I'm not talking about the regular weather forecast - this is a specific Cherry Blossom Flowering Forecast. There's an abbreviated forecast at About.com, but the one on the news features a maps with dates of Cherry Blossom Flowering onset, complete with information about the best viewing window, to help people plan which days they will host their parties or picnics. In Tokyo, where they expect full Hanami time to strike any minute now, there was a full report on the man whose responsibility it is to officially announce cherry blossom season. Apparently, there is a specific tree they use as the barometer (sort of like Punxsutawney Phil). When a certain percentage of its buds come into bloom, then the season is officially underway. The Japanese government official was convinced that enough blossoms would be in bloom very soon, and returned yesterday several times to the tree to count blooms. It must be his only responsibility for this time of the year.

Apparently the blooms are very early this year due to unseasonably warm weather, coming about 9 or 10 days earlier than the usual date of blooming in the various cities. This is causing some consternation among those whose livelihoods depend on the income from people on Hanami picnics or walks or parties. It reminds me a little of the great trauma experienced in low-snow years in Wisconsin, where all the people who depend on snowmobilers or cross country skiers suddenly find they have no income because there's no snow for outdoor activities. Still, it's not as if the cherry blossoms aren't coming out at all -- they're just coming a little early. Perhaps people's parties have long been planned for dates which it's now clear will be after the main blooming time. All the same, I am sure people will still flock to see the blossoms as soon as they come out. Everyone's just caught a little off guard.

Hokkaido wasn't even included in last night's Hanami forecast. In the cherry blossom forecast, they showed pictures of cherry trees with buds on the limbs, just waiting to burst out. Considering the piles of snow still on the ground here, it's clear our trees won't have buds any time soon, let alone blooms. I suppose that's why Hanami time here is supposedly in May. Stay tuned. I'm sure we'll have pictures.

Weaving

The weather continues to be very spring-like. By that, I don't mean it's really warm, although that has happened. What I mean is that we cycle through the seasons in one day, starting sometimes with a clear morning, having almost a blizzard an hour later, clearing slightly, snowing again, clearing.... going from 4 below zero to as high as 8 degrees (Celsius) above zero in one day.

All of these rapid changes could be seen through the large windows spanning an entire wall of my classroom at Geijitsu no Mori, although most of the time I was there, it was snowing like mad. Read the rest of the details of my weaving class.

Classes in Japanese

This past weekend I took a spinning class at the Art Park here in Sapporo. When I say "spinning," I don't mean bicycling to music on an imaginary bicycle with a sweaty instructor barking out commands. I mean the old-fashioned kind of spinning, where you make yarn.

Now I know I've said before that people in Sapporo don't really speak English. Sometimes people working at stores or restaurants will dredge up a bit of their English knowledge (such as around the time of the Snow Festival when lots of gaijin were around), but most of the time, we struggle. Still, certain communities of people know more than others -- Matt's labmates may not speak much English but they do understand quite a bit, from reading English journals, if nothing else.

If I was looking for a community with the poorest English language skills, I would have to say I pretty much found it at the Art Park. Most of the other students were older women, say in their 40s and 50s. None of them spoke any English. Nor did the primary teacher, an older woman, or the secondary teacher, an older man. Nor did the assistant, a young woman who managed to speak perhaps 10 words of English to me over 2 days. The class did include one woman who could say a few words in English but whose primary foreign language was French because she studied it for 8 years. Too bad she hadn't studied German for 8 years; then, we might have had a chance of actually talking to each other. There was also one younger woman, perhaps just a bit older than me, who could communicate somewhat in English, enough to say she might know more English than I know Japanese. Anyway, the class was challenging for not being able to speak the language. We'll see what next weekend's weaving class is like. At least I've already taken a weaving class.

Read more about my spinning class.