Inside Student Blogs

Everywhere I turn: cherry blossoms. On tv, in the food, the music… Cherry blossoms truly have a special place in the heart of the Japanese people.

Sadly, the only time I actually went out chasing for the cherry blossoms, I failed at finding them.

This past weekend was the last field trip with IES and, as much as I hate to say it, the trip was sadly disappointing. We spent Saturday in Nara sightseeing and although it was quite pretty, having been there in the past, it wasn’t all that exciting the second time around.  What I was truly looking forward to was day two which we spent in Yoshino, a mountain renowned for having hundreds of cherry blossom trees. Indeed, there were many many trees… However, since this year has been particularly cold, there weren’t many cherry blossoms at all. We only found one tree that had actually begun to bloom. In fact, had we stayed in Nagoya, we most definitely would have seen more cherry blossoms than we did in Yoshino. The ryokan we stayed in though was nice. There was an outdoor bath. The food was good. The weather was wonderful… The only things missing were the actual cherry blossoms! Hence, I have no worthwhile pictures to share from the trip…

That being said, as some of you may know, Japan has a tradition of going cherry blossom viewing, a tradition known as “ohanami.” People pack picnics and sit under the cherry blossoms, drinking and basically having a party while enjoying the beautiful flowers. Luckily, before leaving for Yoshino, I did have the chance to go cherry blossom viewing in Nagoya. So although I have no nice pictures to share from the IES trip, I do have some from Nagoya! Hopefully I will get the chance to go once more before all the blossoms get washed away by the coming rain because it truly was beautiful!

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