Stratford upon Avon and this area around it are suddenly full of gorgeous cherry blossom. And my daughter has just been making paper lotus flowers at school (to an amazingly simple origami formula - straight folds in paper produce a curved result - weird!) Put those together and you remember that cherry blossom is the national flower of Japan and that designs on paper depicting it are part of Japanese tradition. So I'm having a Japanese-y blog today.
Blossom-time in Japan is when everyone goes to hanami or 'flower-viewings', which are parties under the blossom trees. They date back to ancient Japan and they're bigger than they've ever been. There's even a blossom forecast announced each year by the Japanese weather bureau to help you do your party planning, because blossom's only good for a brief week or so. And that's the thing about blossom - it's very beautiful and very transient, which is why they wind their mythology around it. And which probably explains why they love printing blossom flowers onto paper that they use for everything that we here couldn't imagine using paper for - some of them in my next blog.
Blossom-time in Japan is when everyone goes to hanami or 'flower-viewings', which are parties under the blossom trees. They date back to ancient Japan and they're bigger than they've ever been. There's even a blossom forecast announced each year by the Japanese weather bureau to help you do your party planning, because blossom's only good for a brief week or so. And that's the thing about blossom - it's very beautiful and very transient, which is why they wind their mythology around it. And which probably explains why they love printing blossom flowers onto paper that they use for everything that we here couldn't imagine using paper for - some of them in my next blog.
1 Cherry Blossom Paper by Bellevue Fine Art 2 Cherry Blossom by Steve Snodgrass
3 Japanese Shouji Screen by Bellevue Fine Art
All photos from Flickr under CCBY license
