Budding Buds of Cherries and Suds

With the ending of March comes the beginning of spring. Perhaps nowhere on earth is this celebrated more than in Japan.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years the people of Japan have been celebrating spring by watching cherry blossoms bloom. From a gray, cloudy winter the soft pink petals of the blossoms are a reminder or birth and life. A quick gust of wind can send the petals skyward, then cascading down like velet snow. Their beauty is very brief, lasting only a weeks or two at most.

Today, not too unlike old Japan, people get together with friends under the cherry trees to eat, talk and, most importantly, drink. I too gathered in a park to celebrate with some of Sanami's friends, but it was too cold and rainy...