Spring: a season that has its honorary position in most of the cultures. The weather brightens up, the day becomes longer and everything around us is made more beautiful and brightens. And although we are not used to celebrating spring’s coming here in Greece, in Japan lots of events are organized in honour of it.

The flowers sakura (=cherry tree) form the main subject of the hanami events, which means “observing flowers”. As you know, sakura have a great meaning for the Japanese: Japan Weather Association takes on issuing a forecast every year regarding when the first blossom will appear in every area of the country and many people hold festivals or picnics in order to practice hanami. Actually, during festivals, there is so much delicious food served that the Japanese joke around saying “Hana Yori Dango”, namely Dango (=dumplings) instead of flowers.

Picnic in order to practice hanami.

Yozakura, hanami that takes place at night. Paper lanterns are hung in many places./

We indicatively present you a link about this year’s forecast regarding the first sakura blossoms, as it is shown by tenki.jp:

https://www.jnto.go.jp/sakura/eng/index.php

It is also worth noting that in early times they were often practicing umemi, which means plum’s blossoms observation. Many old people prefer umemi because these days hanami celebrations attract lots of people, something that makes them loud and not at all favourable for concentration and relaxation.

Umemi: plum’s blossoms observation/

However, in spring Japanese people don’t occupy themselves only with the celebrations. Specifically, all the students of the country prepare festivals for the end of the school year, which is at March 25th and begins around April 5th. Of course the graduation or the transition from one educational grade to the next is of great importance and as it is expected, this process is connected with emotions of excitement, optimism, melancholy and stress. You must have seen an anime or heard a song with this kind of topic!

So this is how the Japanese celebrate spring! What do you usually do this time of the year?