Last year when I first arrived in Japan, I was really looking forward to my 初花見 (first ever Hanami). But unfortunately the earthquake happened just before the warm south wind came, and everyone was told to constrain themselves and feel sad for the people who died and suffered, instead of enjoy cherry blossoms.
The truth is, cherry still blossomed, and it was overwhelmingly beautiful for me. Not allowed to do it publicly, I was quietly enjoying the Sakura from my local McDonald. My street was long and full of big cherry trees on both side, the best you can imagine as a foreigner first seeing it. I also found a swing not far from the McDonald, right under a huge sakura tree. I was swinging until quite dizzy of course.
Finally, after a year, we are allowed to enjoy the sakura openly. Thus all the gaijins here are having an ‘overdose’ (thanks for Adrien for the perfect term) of sakura. We skipped the joy of Yoyogi and Ueno, but we could not resist the charm of Shinjuku Gyoen. We also end up going to some splendid hanami trips first in Saitama, then in the deep mountains of Nara and Kyoto. I will leave the rest to the pictures. Enjoy!
Question: can you guess which of those pictures were taken by a Mamiya 645… an infrared camera… and a Fujifilm X-Pro 1? The rest has been taken with the Nikon D800.
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