The Truth About Cherry Blossoms

To tell the truth, ever since I got here I wondered about whether the two weeks in April when the Cherry trees blossomed was actually worth putting up with the trees for the other three hundred and some odd days of the year. I mean, they don't even actually produce cherries, or any other fruit for that matter. In all reality for the better part of the year these trees aren't really much to look at. Most of them look like gnarled old men hunched over at the waist and many are even held up by various crutch-like appendages or bandaged up like a war vet who has been through hell and back (apparently "tree doctors" are in huge demand here). So I wondered as I waited for spring whether the ring of trees surrounding the courtyard in front of Himeji castle - looking like an ancient woodland lawnbowling club - could possibly be so beautiful that I would forget the 50 weeks of the year that they look like members of a hospital geriatric ward.

Probably by now you have guessed the answer to my questions based on the myriad of pictures on this blog and the other comments that I have made so far, but I wanted to tell you the best part: the end of the cherry blossoms are as good as their beginning! Although it is sad to see them go, it is amazing to watch the petals slowly fall from the tree like limbfuls of confetti tossed at the end of a wedding ceremony (back when people actually used to do that kind of thing!). In the end the ground becomes covered with countless flower petals and I begin to understand the national obsesson with the Cherry blossom.
Rod :)