Cherry Blossoms

Well the cherry blossoms have finally arrived in Hokkaido, a month and a half after the rest of Japan. Obihiro has almost completely transformed, trees are growing leaves, grass is actually green, and I finally saw the sun. The amount of pink everywhere is a bit overwhelming, even when I first arrived I was a bit shocked at how many posters, paintings or billboards of cherry blossoms there were. They are beautiful but sometimes I feel that they’re overrated – just a little bit… They only last for three weeks of the whole year and the Japanese make it sound like they only grow in Japan and all year round. Nonetheless the blossom season, wherever you are in Japan and whatever month it arrives, is definitely something to look forward to. I don’t know if it’s me just being stupid but I swear that a city smells different when there’s green growing on trees. I could almost feel the first day of spring when I woke up; the clouds were sparse and there were birds chirping instead of cawing. The ravens in Japan are positively weird. They sound like a human impersonating a crow, it’s so strange to listen to them. Sometimes when I’m riding home from school I hear a crow and almost fall off my bike, they’re like someone very funny is trying to be funny by scaring me impersonating a crow. It’s hard to explain.

Anyway, the sakura have definitely changed what I thought earlier about Obihiro being the ugliest city in existence but they still don’t hide the cracked road and collapsing houses. After finally finding my bearings in Obihiro I’ve come to realize that the suburb I live in is filled with factories, panel-beaters and hermit women with glad-wrap for windows. I almost yelped when I first saw my neighbour the other day, she looked like garlic, completely wrinkled and hunched like a mangled stick wearing medieval peasant clothes. It seems she was in hibernation over the winter and now only comes out of her shack to tend to her vegetable patch. I had always thought her house was my family’s garden shed, it has newspaper and glad-wrap for windows, a frontdoor that’s almost fallen off it’s hinges and a roof that’s completely curved from the weight of snow. I’m really curious as to what she does all day and what kind of life she has/had.

Apart from her I’ve met a lot of strange people who seem a lot more interesting than the strange people in Australia. The other day I went to an ostrich farm, which is strange in itself. The owner of the ostrich farm wears an ostrich feather in his hat and yellow and red striped suspenders. He has a hobby of collecting enormous dinosaur statues which make the ostrich farm appear even more “unique”. There were colourful turkeys running around the legs of a huge tyranosaurus rex who is as big as the biggest building in Obihiro; goats chained to the ground in the middle of the entrance to the park; and least of all, one of those bull-riding machines that you see in cowboy movies. Me and my friend were confused, first of all at why the heck there was an ostrich farm in Hokkaido and second of all why the ostrich farm was more of a bizarre collector’s display than an ostrich farm.

 Golden Week has just finished here which officially begins Spring (and apparently happiness) in Hokkaido. I’m already starting to miss the snow as I still hadn’t really gotten over it after I arrived. As much as I love the sun and warmth and green, I’m already looking forward to October when it starts snowing again. Golden Week holds a lot of festivities, I think there’s four national public holidays in the same week which makes it very significant for every Japanese family. Yesterday was Children’s Day and I went to see the famous koinobori which are hundreds of carp flags hung up high across a river in a town near Obihiro called Taiki. The same is done all over Japan and I’m hoping that what I saw in Taiki isn’t the best of it. I was given the impression that it’s a marvellous display, instead it was old and faded carp over a pretty ugly river with banks of gravel. I wasn’t really impressed but it seems that the throngs of Japanese families around me were. It must bring back a lot of fond memories for the older people and it must be very exciting for the children whom the day was created for.

That’s all I have to say today. One more thing, even though Japanese adore cute and cuddly things more than any other country in the world – they treat their pets terribly and that’s pretty much my only serious complaint after being here for six weeks.