April 7 and 15, 2012 - Hanami

With a cherry tree in our backyard, we felt we needed to have some people over for hanami.  Hanami means flower viewing and is the traditional Japanese custom of enjoying the beauty of flowers.  It almost always refers to cherry blossoms.  We had just noticed that our tree had a bunch of blossoms on Thursday.  It seemed like short notice to pull something together for Drew's office for this weekend, so instead we invited over two neighborhood families for Saturday, April 7 (each of whom has a child who's a friend of one of our kids).  The day ended up being cold and rainy, so we enjoyed the cherry tree from inside the house.

Here is a picture of what our tree looked like on Friday, April 6, the day we sent out the invitation to Drew's office for the following weekend:

We had about 35-40 people come.  I didn't think to take pictures at the party (pretty sure it was because I was too busy), but I did take a picture of some beautiful flowers my friend Whitney brought me for the party.

Part of the beauty in viewing the cherry blossoms lies in seeing them flutter the ground.  I certainly couldn't capture that with my iPhone camera, but here is a picture of all the cherry blossoms on the ground a day or two before the party.  If you look closely, you can see some of the blossoms in the air.

Although the cherry blossom forecast (yes, there is such a thing) said that peak cherry blossom time in Tokyo would go through April 15 (party day), alas, it was not to be.  Here is a picture of our cherry tree on the day of Drew's office party:

But the party went on as planned. :)  We did notice that day that another tree next to the cherry tree was starting to bloom.  When I checked with one of my Japanese teachers, I found out it was also a cherry tree, but a different, later-blooming variety.  How lucky, TWO cherry trees!

Japanese word of the day:  hanami  (click to hear pronunciation) means "cherry blossom viewing"