Cherry Blossoms in the Rain

The drought of the Pinelands seems to be ending. We’ve had successive weekends of sustained rainfall, and the reservoir levels are rising toward normal. Living near a million-acre tinderbox can be unnerving. Is that scent of woodsmoke someone’s fireplace, a prescribed burn, or a wildfire?

The fleeting warmth and rain of Spring have wakened the insects, and the birds with them. The huge clouds of pine pollen are coming. Pine trees exude so much pollen that foragers bag pine boughs and shake them to collect it, for use as a protein-rich flour. I haven’t tried it, myself. Another sign of spring is that the Japanese cherry blossoms are in bloom.

The largest collection of these trees in the United States is claimed by Branch Brook Park in Newark, New Jersey, where I used to go to see them each year. Washington D.C. has the largest such festival in the country. The trees were gifts from Japan, and the beauty of sakura is enough to understand how they are a symbol of Spring worth celebrating.

Philadelphia has a yearly festval sponsored by Subaru, who own a factory across the Delaware River in Camden. We went to Fairmount Park to see it this year. They have a small collection of Japanese cherry blossoms around the Shofuso, a Japanese house and garden. There was a beer garden by Three Bottoms Brewery, who had a mandarin and a yuzu radler (a beer half-mixed with a fruit juice) and a cherry and dragonfruit wheat beer. Local food trucks served Japanese food.

It’s been twenty years since I visited Tokyo to be a corner man for my friend Peter’s first amateur Shooto fight; he took me to Niigata, and the small town of Kameda where he taught English and trained. Every tourist destination had vending machines serving cold beer, soft drinks, and hot or iced coffee, plus someone selling fried food on a stick, like takoyaki (fried octopus fritters). The food at the festival was more fusion, with bubble tea and bao buns. But one of the most memorable meals I had in Japan was at a bar called Northern Lights in Niigata, where the chef, a Japanese woman married to the Canadian bartender, made a pizza with Canadian bacon and cheese curds, like poutine. They embrace fusion, as well as keeping traditions alive.

The festival had karate demonstrations, tea ceremonies, and flower arranging; plus a cosplay contest, so some of the crowd were dressed as their favorite anime characters or Pokemon creatures. The rain was mild, more of a mist, leaving droplets on the pink cherry blossoms, and sometimes a snowfall of white petals beneath the trees. It was an event with good vibes. Japanese popular culture was less common when I was young; Mario Brothers and other arcade games, Godzilla, the animated show Battle of the Planets (known as Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in Japan) and Speed Racer were all I remember. Now, it is dominant.

Some photos from Japan. Me sparring with Keigo Kunihara, a crow eating koi, traditional archers.

I didn’t try sushi until college; the restaurant was traditional, with low tables. (It still stands under a new name, serving wagyu and tonkatsu.) Now, I can get sushi at nearly every supermarket. I met my wife because of my trip to Japan; my friend’s sister had visited a year after I did, with her cousin; she wanted to introduce Sarah to her cousin, and asked me to come along so it wasn’t an obvious setup. She said she found a few Japanese places on the Lower East Side to remind us of Tokyo; we were out all night feasting on sushi, beer, okonomiyaki (a kind of fried savory pancake loaded with other things) with dancing bonito flakes, sake and shoyu, and more. Sake Bar Decibel is still open, and next year is the 20th anniversary of that outing. Perhaps we will reenact it…