This year sakura season felt like a personal affront. The delicate clouds of blossoms burst forth for a few fleeting days, a reminder to savor the present, to live in the now. The notion is called wabi-sabi: life, like the cherry blossom, it is beautiful because of its impermanence, not in spite of it, more exquisite for the inevitability of loss. Well, I thought bitterly, that and eight Hundred yen would buy me a cup of green tea. A couple of hundred centuries ago, watching the blooms was the sacred pastime of nobility. Now ubiquitous ohanami, or blossom viewings, are mostly an excuse to par-tay. The hot ohanami spot in … Continue reading Peggy Orenstein