Social Sakura
Remember Yahoo’s social weather reporting? Well, they’ve adapted it specifically for this spring’s sakura (cherry blossom) season. If you visit the Japanese Yahoo Weather site, you’ll see links to the page. It’s called 「お花見特集２００９みんなでつくる桜情報」 or “Cherry Blossom Viewing Special Feature 2009: Sakura Forecasts by Everyone.” You can use an interactive map to click through to find viewing areas in your location. If you’re a contributing type, you can submit photos of the blooms. I still haven’t found a voting portion of the site, but I imagine there isn’t going to be one – it’s more collaborative, and such a short-lived thing that the work needed for that seems a little out there.
When you’re looking at a region, the various parks will have their trees rated in one of 5 categories. I’ll briefly explain them here.
the trees are still budding
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2 – 咲き始め – sakihajime
the buds have started to open
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3 – 7分咲き – shichibuzaki
the flowers are 70% open
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4 – 満開 – mankai
the flowers are in full bloom
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5 – 散り始め – chirihajime
the petals have started to fall
My favorite time to go viewing is obviously mankai, followed closely by chirihajime. Ah, sakura. Showing us how sweet and beautiful transience can be. (Watching cherry blossoms falling to the ground is an exemplary occasion to discuss 物の哀れ or mono no aware, the heightened appreciation of beauty intermingled with a kind of entropic pathos. Candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long and all that.) I only wish that the sakura-flavored goodies would stick around longer than their real world counterparts… Ha ha.
