Wait for it ...
It's like a cherry tree photo museum.
Think of it, all those cherries! Cherries all over the place. Cherry pies, cherry ice cream, cherry jubilee, cherry liquor, cherry syrup, cherry preserves, cherry dressing, pickled cherries, brandied cherries, cherry coolers, cherry smoothies, cherry sangria, cherry cake, cherry cheesecake, cherry cream coffee cake, cherry upside down cake, cherry frozen yogurt, cherry Pavlova, cherry foccacia, cherry-berry crumble, cherries up to your ears.
My dad planted an "L" shaped row of various fruit trees in his boyhood home in Bethlehem Pennsylvania, that were full grown when my brother and I were kids, and the cherry tree was my favorite to climb and to pick and eat the fruit. Better than the apple tree and better than the pear tree, and better than the plum tree. All fruit-bearing. Although climbing it was a mess, and not every cherry was perfect. Hang on.
I'm re-living that now. What a rush.
The photos are beautiful. But it makes me a bit sad at the same time. But also happy. Happy and sad mixed together. These photos create emotions I do not understand.
Hikarigaoka Park also has lovely cherry trees. Here, look at them. The place used to be Grant Heights Air Force Base, although there is hardly a mention of that. Apparently an unhappy national memory they'd just as soon forget, our military domination over your entire society that fundamentally re-shaped it by force to what it is today. Best not to mention it. 1945-1973 that's 28 years easily disappeared.
That is my life you are disappearing. In a most beautiful way. If you click on this photo I think that it grows.
The Wikipedia page that read about Grant Heights is no loger there. It's subsumed to a footnote elsewhere and described as "housing area." How many housing areas you know with military airport activity and military communications?
Since the entire area was entirely built within the original base (the main road that runs in front of the subway station/department store was once the runway of Narimasu Airfield), even now when you view an overhead map of Tokyo, it is very distinctive.
Let's look.
Since the main thoroughfare stretches literally from the train station to the pond, it's used at times for parades, festivals and street food booths - I was lucky enough once to drop by and find a Yosakoi dance festival parading down the main strip. The shrubbery is well-tended and a few signs placed here and there describe the history of the park and its details.
Narimasu was the name of our school. It was my 3rd 5th grade school. I went from a frightening dingy temporary tacked-together place at Tachikawa to a brand spanking new brick building also inside Tachikawa, where everything was absolutely new, every floor tile put down the week previous, I watched them doing it, to the 48-star flag, brand new. Every book I picked up in the library had never been read previously, every desk, every pencil, brand new. Then Narimasu, a row of Quonset huts added to the larger brick school, to meet the increased demand for ... me.
My new teacher was a hard-assed French national whose life mission was to improve American school standards, starting with ... me.
I must now sing to snap out of this strange mood.
Sakura sakura
yayoi no sora wa
mi-watasu kagiri
kasumi ka kumo ka
nioi zo izuru
izaya izaya
mini yukan
All of us knew the words to this song. We had to. The adults wanted all the lovely little children to become culture-fied while immersed and for every one, all of us, that started with Sakura.
Those words mean:
Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms,
Across the spring sky,
As far as the eye can see.
Is it mist, or clouds?
Fragrant in the air.
Come now, come now,
Let's go and see them!
Pfft. Doesn't even rhyme.
Then the koto stringed instrument on the floor that ladies play goes solo,
plunk plunk plink plunk
plunk plinky-plunk.
plunk plunk plink plunk
plinky plinky plunk.
strum.
Do this at a party sometime.
plunk plunk plinky plunk strum
plunk plinky plunk.
They'll look at you like you're crazy. And you are.
Plinky plunky plinky plinky, plinky plinky plunk
Now they're becoming a bit annoyed with you. So you speed it up. This is the sound of cherry blossoms falling, and the wind kicked up. Look at them straight in the face and continue with emphasis, because your cherry blossoms are serious.
plunkplunkplinkyplunk
plinkyplinkyplunk
plinkyplinkyplinkyplinkyplinkyplinky plunk.
And keep doing that until they crack up because there really is no end to these freaking cherry blossoms. They're all over the place. Over the whole world. All blooming at once. Flower petals everywhere, filling the rain gutters, getting underneath the windshield where the water squirts out, out your eyeballs with allergies.
plinky plinky plinky plinky plinky plinky plunk
They will crack up.
The song is insane. Worst earworm ever.
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