Hanami, drinking under the cherry blossoms

Hanami ! Ueno Park, Tokyo
Hanami is there ! The traditional, utmost-Japanese tradition of going out in the parks to view and enjoy the full blossoming of cherry trees at this time of the year is back. On this occasion, friends, colleagues and family gather under the trees, drinking sake and beer (sodas for the kids) and eating food... Hanami signals the end of winter but here in this country there's a plus, it bears an almost religious or philosophical character regarding the yearly wonder of life and putting things into perspective after so much effort devoted to work and long hours to fuel the economy.
Predicting the date of cherry blossom is a difficult exercise every year and the target is often missed by the cherry-blossom forecast sites, this year making no exception. The blossoming was supposed to begin its full blown stage around march 25 but it happened actually a few days earlier, wednesday march 20, a public holiday in Japan (Equinox day, or spring), which was a wonderful chance as people and family could go en masse to the parks.
It seems that Tokyo has resumed its full-blown Hanami parties two years after the Tohoku disasters. This very Hanami at Ueno had been canceled in 2011 in the wake of the mourning and the ones that weren't canceled were very somber as all the attention was focused on the aftermath of the tsunami (see article).
Most of these pictures were shot during this very first day of Hanami 2013 in Ueno Park, Tokyo.

A family with children Hanami or cherry-blossom viewing is foremost a family affair, and parents transmit the virus to their children through these yearly worship walks, which are followed by dinner parties as soon as the age of the children allows it. Tokyo like every city in this country has many different parks and areas where Hanami can be enjoyed by thousands of sakura-blossom worshipers. Documenting the activity on each of these cherry-blossom spots in Tokyo would need to work every day all along the blossoming season. A group of teenagers in Ueno, Tokyo The first thing you need for your Hanamy party under the cherry trees is a large plastic sheet (often a blue one, these days) on which you'll be comfortable sitting without worrying of the dirt (even if by French standards the pavement is very clean in Japanese cities). It is not uncommon that one of the group volunteers to come reserve the spot in advance byr spreading out the sheet and sitting there waiting for the rest of the group. In the case od company parties, it's often a junior employee who does this arduous job so that his fellow salarymen and superiors arrive from work. TV interview The first Hanami parties are so important that the TV channels send their teams of reporters to interview the joyous revelers who seem happy to communicate their good mood and spirits to the viewers across the country. I don't know what exactly were the questions but I guess they asked things like what did you bring for drinking and are you with friends or colleagues. The TV crews would stop at several groups of Hanami-partiers and do their show with the good-willing group. Mixed group The most commond drink from my casual overlook of all these improvised tabled was beer, nihonshu (sake) coming in second, then shochu, and the kids and sometimes the women had sodas. But the trend is to drink at will in these parties, and you could hear it by the laughs and volume of the exchanges. But the families tended to be more quiet than the teenagers-only or adult groups. 3 Friends You needed to add a layer of cloth on your back in the evening but spring in Tokyo is pretty fair, with temperatures around march 20 at about 19 ° C and a bit less in the evening. A few pours of sake or beer was everything you needed to make up for the temperature drop. Hanami still life In short, the Hanami parties are outdoor dinner parties, and you'll find there the usual dishes of the Japanese diet, with fish in the front seat. You find a good choice of this ready-to-eat food in the depachika section (basement) of the depatos (department stores), and at the end of the day the depatos often sell with good rebates because they won't put it back on the shelves the following day. Office employees enjoying a Hanami party Office parties are probably the most intriguing for us foreigners because it allows us a glance on salarymen and executives sharing good time and letting themselves go. Japan is in this regard very different from many Western countries where I don't think that co-workers, especially when supervisory executives are present, indulge in large amounts of drinks. This time I didn't see many such groups because this was a public holiday, but on other weekdays there were certainly plenty of black-dressed men. Toasting with a sparkling wine Here these two women were having a bottle of sparkling wine, possibly an Italian if I remember. The one on the right invited me to have a glass with them but I didn't want to disturb their party and I declined with a smile. When people were drinking wine it would often be imports, like Italian, Spanish or Chile/Argentina wines. On one of my pictures (not posted here) I spotted a Frontera Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile and a Casillero Del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, also from Chile. Elsewhere I saw a Cono Sur bottle, all these wines being cheap mass bottlings. Couple in Ueno Park, Tokyo Here for example, this couple is drinking different things, the man with the hat having an Asahi beer (the brand which was the most common out there) while his girlfriend has a cocktail mix I'm not familiar with, and which sported 5 % in alcoholm from what I can read on the hi-res file. Notice that when you don't have a plastic sheet at hand, a newspaper will do the job. Asian flush People drink lots of alcohol at these outdoor Hanami parties, and you come across asian-flush occurences like in Japanese bars and casual restaurants. Asian flush can occur even with small amounts of alcohol and some Japanese people (especially women) refuse to drink any alcohol by frear of experiencing it. The origin of this phenomenon lies in the genetics of people in Asia. I took on my own to publish the picture because the man here is partly hidden by his face mask (this high season for hay fever here) but I think it's not very comfortable to feel you're purple red like that. Group of friends with a large bottle of sake Six Japanese beauties posing for me Take off your shoes ! The crowd looking for the best angle Watching the Japanese take pictures of cherry blossoms is intriguing I think, by a Western photographer perspective. It's an obsessive search for the perfect cherry-flower picture, and I consider that expats living in Japan really become Japanese in the inside when they begin to take themselves this sort of picture, when they do it genuinely and not only to sort-of act like. In this regard, I'm far to be Japanese even if I tried my best with a couple of pictures like the one above, and I feel much more at ease with the human scenes taking place around Hanami...
Lots of technical means are often devoted by the Japanese for this worship picture : a tripod or even a folding ladder, lenses and camera bodies that I'd dream to have for my own photo work, and what seemed to be hours of intense research for the best angle and frame. Even if most people would use their phone, tablet or compact digital camera, they share the same worship for this spring event and I'm almost sure that the pictures will be widely shared and often printed.
Well, let's compromise, here is cherry-blossom picture with a human background. I've not seen elsewhere so many smart phones and tablets shooting at the same target in unison. It's the Japanese tradition going along the lst technical gadgets and tools. We're used elsewhere in the world to modernity uprooting deeply-rooted traditions, but here there's no antagonism, the latter even giving a hand to the former. Folding the sheet at the end Remember, this is Japan, and at the end of a Hanami party, before a given group of friend or colleagues dissolves, everyone does his/her share to clean the place, gathering the trashes and folding meticulously the plastic sheet. Watch the neatly-lined plastic bags waiting for the waste-collecting trash cans. Waste management The trash and waste is collected through distinct categories and while the Japanese let themselves go during these parties they're nonetheless respecting very seriously the sorting of the different waste afterwards. These waste-collecting structures were set up the same day (I witnessed the operation) and the big portable bags will hold separately the glass bottles, the can/pet-bottles, the styrofoam, the vinyl/plastics, the newspapers/magazines, the burnable waste and the "other garbage"... Cherry blossom at night

Comments

[BK]

ohh ugh..used to live in Japan as a child...some of my best and most vivid memories revolved around cherry blossom festivities..still lovely as ever.

[Ibukun]

Seems like you having a great time in each of these pictures. I am envious of you right now we are still experiencing cold weather in the UK.