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My Favorite Cherry Blossom Photo This Year

Cherry Blossoms or “sakura” are a major part of Japanese culture. I’d say there are at least 200 cherry trees within a mile of my house, and this is not at all unusual. It’s a perfect opportunity to try for the ultimate cherry blossom photo.

Every school yard, public park and playground, has a row of cherry trees. Temples usually have at least one, and many highways are lined with them as well. Starting in early March, the weather report will show the “cherry blossom front” as the trees burst into bloom in succession from south to north along with the warmer spring weather.

Photographers do their utmost to capture the great sea of pink and white that casts a happy sakura glow over the country, and most calendars have the quintessential cherry blossom photo. This year I focused on close-ups of the individual blossoms, and this one is my favorite.

It’s taken standing close to the trunk and pointing up toward the sky. It was the first clear day we’d had in forever, and the bright sun shows the shadows of the stamens for each sakura flower. The blue sky makes a great background, and the blurred cherries stretching away into the background show a little of the volume of flowers in the area. I especially like the little half open buds that look like little pink buttercups.

If you’re planning a trip to Japan, I’d recommend early April, when the sakura are blooming over most of the country. It’s a phenomenon you don’t want to miss!

Japanese Bamboo

Japanese bamboo is amazing. It usually grows from root tubers sent out underground by the parent tree, but if you plant a seed, you will have to wait years before it sprouts, then it will grow to it’s full height in only 40 days. Japanese bamboo is actually a form of grass, but is so strong that construction workers often use it in place of steel to make scaffolding. Bamboo shoots are edible, and serve as a common vegetable in Japan.

I took these bamboo photos yesterday, as I was suprised to find the checkerboard pattern with green coloring on every other segment of this Japanese bamboo. It’s growing near a temple, so perhaps it’s just a little bit different variety from the regular Japanese bamboo we see all over the mountainsides in Southern Japan.

Bamboo photos are a bit of a challenge for two reasons. The dense foilage renders a bamboo grove quite dark, even when the sun is high. Many of the bamboo photos I took yesterday took so long to expose that they were grainy and out of focus. Also bamboo is so tall it’s quite a challenge to get the cathedral type feeling one experiences when walking through a grove.

If anyone knows the reason for the interesting coloring in these bamboo photos, please let me know!

New Years in Japan

New Years in Japan is festival based predominantly on Shinto traditions. It’s a day full of customs and superstitions that nearly everyone observes from eating fish eggs in the morning so your children will thrive to sticking your head in the mouth of a health lion!

We have a Shinto shrine near the top of a mountain near our house. Many people climb the mountain in the night to pay their respects as soon after midnight as possible. Many more make the trip in the daytime on the first or second, either hiking up the mountain in the snow, or braving the inevitable long line of cars. Either way, Shinto traditions dictate that in order to have optimum luck and success in the new year you must visit not one, but three shrines.

I drove up to the Shinto shrine this afternoon to see if I could get some interesting photos of New Years in Japan, and learned several new things. This part time temple girl is putting out good luck arrows for the new year. Each family buys one of these and puts in next to the god shelf in their home to bring good luck and fortune throughout the year.

This stylized model of a lion was one of the many Shinto traditions that was entirely new to me. I heard a clapping noise – always in sets of two and went to see what it was. A priest person all dressed in a black and white checker pattern from head to toe, was holding this lion’s head at the entrance to the temple’s inner court. There were two of them, one at each side of the entrance. Hundreds of people were lined up waiting to ask for good favor for the coming year, as as they passed the lions, they would bend down and put their heads into one of the the lion’s mouths. Then after they took their head out, the lion’s jaws would be clapped shut twice.

I asked one of the temple worker’s standing nearby to explain the meaning of this strange ceremony. He said it was for health for the new year. The health lion was said to remove any bad karma that could cause sickness, and eat it so the worshiper could start the year in perfect health. He invited me to have all my sickness eaten away by a health lion as well, but I told him I am a Christian, and had no need for help from the health lion. I just wanted to take pictures.

New Years in Japan is a complicated affair, and even the Japanese learn something new about their deep Shinto traditions every year. Personally, I’m glad my life is much simpler. May each one of you reading this have a new year full of fulfillment, health and happiness, with or without the help of a Shinto health lion!

Christmas in Japan

I am often asked if people celebrate Christmas in Japan. Yes, in a sense they do. The cities are aglow with Christmas lights and decorations from the middle of October. The traditional treat for Christmas in Japan is a white champagne cake with whipped cream and strawberries, heavily decorated with a plastic Santa Claus and reindeer.

Children sit up on Christmas eve to find out if Santa Claus will really come. In fact, all the craze among the children this year is to write to Santa without telling their parents. If they get what they want, they will know Santa Claus is real.

The main event for Christmas in Japan is the Christmas Eve date. All the hotels and restaurants are booked solid, and will serve a special Christmas Eve date dinner ranging from $80 to $300 a plate. High school boys and young adults save for months to make the Christmas Eve date special for their sweethearts, often presenting them with diamonds or other expensive gifts.

The one thing that is conspicuously missing from the festivities on Christmas in Japan, is any mention of Jesus Christ. Santas abound, but nativity scenes are not available. The grocery stores and malls play all the Santa songs and winter songs associated with Christmas, but very few carols. There is no talk of peace, love or hope, and giving to the poor is not part of the festivities.

I was walking in the hills yesterday evening, looking down at the south part of the city of Kurume and thinking about this sad situation when The sun broke through the clouds, promising a glorious sunset. The famous passage from the Bible in Isaiah 9:2 immediately etched itself on my mind: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

Jesus Christ came to bring the light of God’s love, forgiveness and hope to a dark and hopeless world but most of the people in Japan are still walking in darkness. Christmas in Japan misses the whole reason we celebrate the most amazing event in history.

I hope and pray your Christmas will be filled with a deeper meaning and a greater hope than Christmas in Japan with its Santa Claus and hot Christmas Eve dates. If you do not celebrate Christmas at all, have a wonderful holiday time in whatever festivities you take part in!

Introducing Children to Shinto

The Shinto religion in Japan requires parents to take their children to the shrine at ages 3, 5 and 7 to be dedicated to the Shinto gods, and recieve protection as they grow up. The children are dressed in brilliant kimonos, or finely embroidered “hakama,” the samurai costume of ancient Japan, and taken to the most prestigious shrine in the area.

The shrine of choice in Kurume is on the mountain near my house, as it’s over 500 years old, so I drove up there to see if I could get some photos of beautiful children. I got so many good ones I had a tough time choosing just a few, but here they are.

Kids will be kids in any culture, and this one was definitely not cooperating. She wanted out of all those fancy clothes right now. I managed to take this shot just before her father told her to sit up straight and smile for the camera. The Japanese lettering on the banner says “Congratulations: 3,5,7 worshippers.”

I was really just trying to capture a shot of some pretty clothes when I took this one. When I got home and looked at it closely, I noticed the story for the first time. The girl in the foreground is looking over her sister’s head at the boy in the suit, who has obviously captured her interest. Alas, just as she realizes she wants to meet him, her father leads him away. Ah well, such is life at times.

I had to work hard to get a photo of this little prince. He was just going in to the inner chambers of the shrine to be “blessed.” His mother was somewhat annoyed that I wanted a photo, but his grandmother had recognized me from somewhere and tried to speak to me in English, so she let me have one split second. Even in a public situation like this, people in Japan take off their shoes when they go inside. Thus the shoes lined up all around him.

And finally, my personal favorite. This picture forces the deep philisophical question of how we should raise our children. The young boy is pointing toward the Shinto shrine as if to say, “Dad, are we really going in there? Are you sure that’s such a good idea?” Of course we all teach our children our own traditions and values, but this picture made me wonder if that father had thought through whether the path he has chosen for his son is based on truth and reality, or just the traditions he’s been handed down.

Most people in Japan practice both Buddhism and Shinto. Nearly all of them will tell you that it means nothing to them, and they just go through the motions because it’s a tradition, but whenever something goes wrong, you will find them at a temple or shrine, trying to appease the gods so they will leave them alone.

Oh! did you notice the girl in the green kimono in the background of the last photo? That’s the same girl who was so disgruntled in the first shot. Don’t forget to click on the photos to see an enlarged version!