April 1st is the Season of New Beginnings in Japan
Today is April 1st, famous in the West as April Fool's Day, a custom that's been imported to Japan in limited form. While some smaller companies or kawatteru (unique) individuals might go out of their way to create April Fool's jokes for the amusement of all, it's unthinkable that a larger organization would engage in such tomfoolery in straight-laced Japan. When I told the Japanese staff of J-List about the legendary 1957 news report the BBC did on the Swiss spaghetti crop that featured farmers "harvesting" the pasta they had "grown," they were shocked -- you'd never catch NHK doing something like that. April 1st is also the beginning of anything official in this part of the world, for cultural reasons that I can't quite fathom, although knowing Japan it's probably a cherry blossom thing. The Japanese fiscal year starts today, so if you live in Japan, I hope you got your taxes filed before last night. Also, new laws usually kick in on April 1st, like the near-total ban on smoking in many JR train stations in Tokyo which went into effect this morning. The school year also starts in April, and the blooming of the sakura create a powerful image of new beginnings for misty-eyed parents as they watch their children start the first day of school.
April 1st is the season of new beginnings in Japan.
posted by Peter in Japan at 7:01 PM
3 Comments:
I love that spaghetti news broadcast, classic
8:06 PM
Oh, now I understand why Japan has this bizarre school year... It had never occurred to me that it could be the season of beginnings there.
Anyway, could you answer a question that's been bugging me for quite a while? If these trees blossom cherry flowers, do they become cherries in the end? Like cherries falling from trees and stuff? I've always pictured them to be a Xmas season little fruit, but here in Brazil we only get the real thing when it's imported (otherwise they "make" cherries with other more common fruits like pineapples).
10:56 AM
From wiki: "Sakura (Japanese kanji : 桜 or 櫻; hiragana: さくら) is the Japanese name for cherry trees and their blossoms. In English, the word "sakura" is equivalent to the Japanese flowering cherry,[1] and their blossoms are commonly called cherry blossoms. Cherry fruit (known in Japanese as sakuranbo) comes from another species of tree."
So all cherry trees are called Sakura in japanese. But there are many types of sakura here is from the main article on cherries on wiki:
"Besides the fruit, cherries also have attractive flowers, and they are commonly planted for their flower display in spring; several of the Asian cherries are particularly noted for their flower displays. The Japanese sakura in particular are a national symbol celebrated in the yearly Hanami festival. Many flowering cherry cultivars (known as 'ornamental cherries') have the stamens and pistils replaced by additional petals ("double" flowers), so are sterile and do not bear fruit. They are grown purely for their flowers and decorative value. The most common of these sterile cherries is the cultivar 'Kanzan'."
So the pretty ornamental cherry trees you see in anime and on TV are of the type that do not bear any fruit. The short explanation is that sacrificing their green leaves to produce flowers, they do not collect enough energy to be able to set fruit.
Cherries are not a christmas fruit. Here in northern Europe cherry season is late summer/early autumn and will be earlier the further you go south.
Cherry from pineapple? strange.
7:57 PM
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