Today Otou-san didn't go to work; he's always got 土日(Satur- and Sunday) off, so he uses the time to go on a walk with Shiro. And since I didn't have anything spectacularly important to do I decided to join him.Although the sakura don't bloom yet, it's a little bit tricky: First off, it's cold. It's always cold when they're about to bloom, and that's not just an unfair prank of nature, but a necessity, because actually the cold air kind of stimulates the blossoms. Seconds, they obviously don't start blooming all at once, so if you wait till even the very last flower has opened, you're either late or just an idiot.
Nevertheless, many people already started doing お花見, which literally means "flower viewing", but is more like picnicking and eating a lot of yummy stuff. That's also where the famous saying 「花より団子」, "dangos over flowers", comes from (dango is a kind of sweet Japanese dumpling). It means that people care more about the food than the actual flowers they're supposed to be viewing. Not far from my house there's the river Sanagawa (佐奈川), which offers an incredibly beautiful view together with the sakura (it's on the photos way below). There are even light bulbs wired on the trees so you can see them on a walk in the evening or night.
In the background you can see that store called "Saty"; it has like everything and is 3 floors tall. That's also where I bought my copy of D'espairsRays "REDEEMER" today.
That's the "sakura tunnel" I've talked about:
There were also stalls up already, which sold the usual stuff you can find at Japanese festivals, like takoyaki, ringoame and so on.
There were also stalls up already, which sold the usual stuff you can find at Japanese festivals, like takoyaki, ringoame and so on.
This inscription here reads as "Usuzumi no Sakura" (薄墨の桜). "Usuzumi" is a kind of thin ink used in calligraphy, but here it refers to the pale color of the sakura blossoms when seen through a thick mist.
At around the same place stands a statue of a woman (or goddess) holding a pigeon in her hand. Those who know a bit history of Toyokawa are probably familiar with the background of it, but for those who ain't: At this place (which is now a mere baseball field) was once a very big ammunition factory used in World War II, which was raided by American bombers on August 7th 1945 (one day after Hiroshima's destruction) killing about 2500 people, many high- and middle school students among them. The statue erected here is a symbol of peace I was told (hence the pigeon).
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