If it were one day later, I would have thought of it as an April fools day prank by someone scattering artificial snowflakes from my apartment terrace, but it was only March 31st and also, NHK, unlike BBC, won't say these kind of things to fool the public even on April 1st. It was snowing and it was cold and I was feeling miserable on a day that could otherwise have been an ideal Hanami day. If it goes on like this, I think I'll have to agree with Dubya for denying all these environmentalist scaremongers' data on global warming and going out of the Kyoto protocol. It is more of a global cooling. Like they came up with a La Nina to an El Nino, any day they will come out with a methane hole to counter the ozone hole, or something like that under the polar caps that is going to freeze the earth back to ice age.
Hanami - flower viewing - is a major cultural activity at the beginning of spring in Japan. Like any major cultural activity in most parts of the world, this involves a large amount of alcohol intake to be puked out later with food items consisting of assorted noodles, squids and octopus snacks (in Kerala it used to be beef fry, mixture and pickles that were thrown up at the end of parties).
Anyway, the flower here is cherry blossom -known as Sakura in Japanese- and like the autumn foliage season, this flower viewing is limited to a couple of weeks. The cherry blossom trees are planted in almost every public park and many streets are also lined with them. In full bloom, it's a treat to watch. There are more than 300 varieties of Sakura in Japan and the colour varies from white to pink. The weather bureau provides info as to where all the flowers are in bloom everyday as the line slowly traces its way up to the north over the map, so you can plan your Hanami day in advance. However, usually they fail to mention whether it'll rain/snow or not on that day as happened on that cold April fools day eve.
Hanami also involves lots of manpower and strategy. Companies let (ever
willing) employees go early (usually from the crack of dawn) to the parks
or gardens to reserve vantage areas under the trees to have their Hanami
parties. In the evening the trees are lit up and the crowds gather under
the trees and enjoy the beauty of the new spring beer cans and sit around
doing office gossip and bitch about the people who didn't come.
The hanami season has moved on from Tokyo now and 2 weeks into April we finally have some warm weather. The pope has said in his Easter message that there is possibility of world peace. I thought he was an OK guy who had this (unfortunate) penchant for kissing airport tarmacs. Now I'm not so sure of his mental faculties. Back in Kerala, the guys in Sabarimala temple have come up with a claim that Ayyappan has told them that he needs a new deepasthambham (and they're planning to ask him whether he'd like the temple to be opened throughout the year). More money to be made!!! I wish they had asked Ayyappan whether it'd be a good idea to build some 1000 toilets and some decent facilities without damaging the ecology and environment any more (so that his devotees can stop defecating in the "sacred" river and it's surroundings). They didn't.