Cherry bomb

Chasing cherry blossoms in Bonn

This is Cherry Blossom Avenue in Bonn (or Heerstraße as it's known locally). Each spring, this street is transformed into a tunnel of puffy, pink cherry blossoms. The trees were in full bloom this week and I headed out after work to take a few pictures.

Cherry blossom season is fast, fleeting and blindingly beautiful. Maybe it's banal to say the cherry blossom is my favourite flower. Maybe it's akin to admitting you like puppies and kittens (who doesn't?). But having a deep appreciation for life's transitory moments is something that resonates with me. And there is no more perfect metaphor for the fleeting nature of life than the pale pink cherry blossom. Blindingly beautiful and then gone.

Leaving Japan

How do you condense three and a half years into a few hundred words? I could fill a book with the highs and lows of my life in Japan. But I need time to digest the experience and time isn't something I've had a lot of recently.

My last few weeks in Japan were divided between the tedious task of packing up and moving out of my apartment and the painful task of saying goodbye to friends. And then, before I knew it, I was flying to Germany and reporting for duty at work the next day. No gentle transition. No buffer. No time to process the fact that Kyoto was no longer home. My life in Japan ended as abruptly as my life in Germany began.

Just to give you an idea of how quickly everything happened, I had a meeting with one of the HR assistants on my first day at work and she asked me to provide copies of various documents, including my master's degree from Kyoto University. I had to explain that I couldn't give her a copy of my master's degree because I hadn't actually graduated yet -- I had started working before the ink on my thesis was dry. (As happy as I am to be working at the UNFCCC, missing my graduation ceremony was a bitter pill to swallow.)

From the moment the plane touched down in Frankfurt, I was caught up in the general busyness that accompanies moving to a new country -- looking for an apartment, moving into an apartment, getting a cell phone, opening a bank account, buying a bike, figuring out where everything is, adjusting to the new job, and learning a few German phrases (this is a work in progress. I haven't moved beyond "good morning" and "thank you" yet). I've been in Bonn for a month now and this is the first weekend I've finally had time to reflect on my life in Japan.

The strange thing is that I don't miss Japan. Not yet. Everything here is still too new, too exciting, too time consuming. Maybe it will hit me in a few months when I've settled into a routine. Or maybe it won't hit me at all. I've already mourned the loss of living in Japan once before. The first time I left Japan, I cried every day for a month. I had only been there for a year and I regretted my decision to leave, which is why I went back. But it was a completely different experience the second time around.

The first time I lived in Japan, I was in a rural area and embedded in the local community. It was an incredible experience but it was also a lonely and isolating one. I would swing between extreme highs and lows. I felt like I was living in the proverbial fishbowl -- everyone knew what I was doing at all hours of the day, every day. There was no privacy. Kids from school would follow me home and press their faces against my kitchen window as I cooked dinner. Old ladies would follow me around the supermarket, muttering about the food I was putting into my basket.

Living in Kyoto was nothing like living in rural Japan. It was easy to slip into the crowd and live anonymously. I spent more time with foreigners than with Japanese people. By not fully integrating into the community the way I had done in Sakawa, I created a buffer that protected me from feeling lonely and isolated. I never experienced the high highs or low lows that I did in Sakawa, but I had deeper friendships in Kyoto and was much happier as a result. You learn a lot about yourself when you live in a foreign country and sometimes these things surprise you. I always thought of myself as an introverted person but I clearly need to feel a sense of belonging to be happy. If I have a group of good friends around me, I can feel at home anywhere. The importance of feeling connected seems obvious but it took a year of solitary confinement to drive the point home.

This time around, I was ready to leave Japan. The rigidity, the inflexibility, the blind adherence to the rules, the mindless consumerism, the conservatism, the conformity, the feeling of being treated like an outsider no matter how long you’ve lived there, the expectation that you will put everything and everyone ahead of yourself and that you will sweep the mental and physical effects of doing so under the rug was starting to wear me down. But, of course, that's all objective stuff. Emotionally speaking, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to detach myself from Japan. I see Japan with open eyes. I see the good things and I see the bad things and I still love it.

The first time I left Japan, I made a list of the things I would and wouldn't miss about living there. The list still holds true today but with a few additions.

I will miss Japanese food. Not the kind of Japanese food that immediately comes to mind, like sushi or ramen. But the simple things like a square of chilled tofu topped with grated ginger and green onions. Or thin slices of gobo dressed with sesame oil. Or miso soup with mountain vegetables. Or a little box of natto for breakfast. Or even just a cup of green tea.

I will miss traveling in Japan. I have yet to visit a country that is as easy, safe or comfortable to travel in as Japan. I will miss sitting on the train watching the ramshackle houses fly by. I will miss the deserted shrines and temples on misty mountain tops. I will miss the empty hiking trails. I will miss the way people worship cherry blossoms in the spring and maple leaves in the fall. I will miss the vibrant green colour of the rice fields in the summer. I will miss hearing the mating calls of frogs that call the rice fields home. I will miss seeing the fireflies along the river on hot summer nights. I will miss hearing the scream of the cicadas. I will miss hearing the wind rush through a forest of bamboo trees. I will miss Japan at its best -- a mystical, magical place where it sometimes feels like you're living in a dream.

I want to say that Japan is no better or worse than any other country. It has its good points and its bad points. And while this is true, there is something just a little bit extra special about Japan. And that's something I will keep with me forever, even as I let go of living in Japan and move forward in Germany.

Sayonara and arigatou.

A red, orange and yellow Christmas

A lifetime of Canadian Christmases has conditioned me to think the only thing that should be hanging from the trees this time of year is icicles or twinkling lights.

It seems wrong that Kyoto is in the last blush of fall when trees back home have been bare for months. It's beautiful but it doesn't feel like Christmas.






Kyoto is a little bit like Vancouver. Both cities are surrounded by mountains where, if you get up high enough, the rain is replaced by snow. Still, there's something unnatural about walking through dry city streets and then arriving in a winter wonderland after an hour of hiking up the side of a mountain.

It's autumn at sea level and winter at elevation. Two seasons for the price of one.

A love letter to Canada

Dear Canada,

Happy 143rd birthday! Although, let's be honest, we both know you're much older than the 143 years the European settlers pretend you are. You may not have been a country in the legal sense of the word but people have called your land home for more than 20,000 years. Dinosaurs roamed across your plains long before we ever did.

The 143-year-old ruse reminds me of the way my mom continues to celebrate her 29th birthday 30 years running. But whatever. Today is not a day to point out your flaws. Today is a day to celebrate all of the wonderful and wacky things that make you so special.

You are so much more than maple syrup, hockey and poutine. You are not just snowshoes, canoes and barbeques. You are the rock beneath our feet. O Canada, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . .

1. Freedom: We are free to be whoever we want to be, say whatever we want to say, and wear whatever we want to wear. Other countries have burqas, bombs, and bullets. We have gay marriage, universal health care, and beer.

2. Diversity: We are a country of immigrants. We have different cultures, different religions, and different ideas but we all somehow manage to get along. We don't throw rocks at each other. We don't plant bombs outside busy markets. We don't believe in blowing each other up. We believe in human rights. We believe in tolerance. We believe a new citizen is every bit as Canadian as someone whose family has been here for five generations. Jamaican, Chinese, African, Indian, Australian . . . we are all Canadian.

3. Tim Hortons: A double-double and a chocolate dip to go, please.


4. Food: We can eat a burrito for breakfast, sushi for lunch, and souvlaki for dinner. A walk around the block is like a gastronomic trip around the world. But food from our own backyard is the best food of all. Blueberries, apples, pears, blackberries, corn, rhubarb, strawberries, potatoes, carrots, cherries, fiddleheads, and tomatoes. Just to name a few.

5. Wilderness: We have real wilderness in Canada. These vast, uninhabited areas are among the last remaining tracts of wilderness in the world. This is our national treasure and we should guard it with our lives. Canada does not just belong to us. It belongs to bears, moose, and caribou too.


6. The CBC: George Stroumboulopoulos, Claire Marin, Rick Mercer, Peter Mansbridge, Jian Ghomeshi, Anna Maria Tremonti, and good old Stuart McLean. The Hour, As it Happens, Definitely not the Opera, Vinyl Tap, A Propos, and The Current. The CBC is intelligent, funny, thoughtful, provincial, original, folksy, and fun. Sophisticated but not sleek. Polished but still a little amateurish. Just like us.


7. Manners: We are polite. We are friendly. We are humble. We are modest. We are unobtrusive. We say "sorry" a lot. We say sorry when you tell us to stop saying sorry all the time. (Sorry! We can’t help it.)

8. The four seasons: Lake swimming in summer, cross-country skiing in winter, walking under a canopy of red maple leaves in fall, and watching cherry trees bloom in spring.





9. Film and TV: FUBAR and Exotica. Degrassi and the Trailer Park Boys. We turn low budgets into brilliant art. Just giv'r!

10. Space: We are a big country with a small population. We can drive for days and still be in the same province. We can walk into the woods and not see another person for months. We live in towns so remote you can only get there by boat or plane. Our biggest cities aren't big at all. Thirty-four million people live in Canada. Thirty-four million people live in the Greater Tokyo Area.

Happy Birthday, Canada! You ancient, rocky, sexy hunk of land you!

Going, going, gone

Same tree, different day. The first photo was taken two weeks ago. The second photo was taken two days ago. Fleeting pink has given way to lasting green. Kyoto's cherry blossom season is officially over.

Blindingly beautiful and then gone.

Cherry blossom fatigue

What I'm about to say probably borders on blasphemy in Japan. But I want the cherry blossoms to hurry up and die already.

It's not that I'm anti-flower. It's just that the cherry blossoms in Kyoto are so blindingly beautiful that you can't not admire them. It's all I've been doing during the past two weeks. I want my life back!

There's no escape from the sakura. The blossoms are absolutely everywhere, turning an already lovely city into a gossamery dreamworld. Even the garbage dump behind my apartment is covered under a canopy of fluttering flowers. Trash has never looked more magical.


Different trees have been blooming at different speeds, so while some petals have already passed their peak, others are just beginning to flower. There's no end in sight!

And the parties. Don't get me started on the parties. There's only so much sake you can drink while contemplating the ephemeral nature of life under a cherry tree. Celebrating all of this fleeting beauty is starting to become monotonous. It feels like there's nothing fleeting about it.





I feel like a kid who has overdosed on candy. The first taste was so sweet and wonderful that I gorged on it to the point of revulsion.

Despite my cherry blossom fatigue, I have agreed to go to two more flower-viewing parties. One tomorrow night, and one that starts at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning and ends never. (I'm not exaggerating. People actually set up tents under the cherry trees and camp out until the last petal falls.)

After Saturday, I'm swearing off cherry blossoms for the rest of the season. No more photos. No more parties. No more gorging on beauty until I feel sick. I can't take it anymore!





As always, you can find the rest of my photos on flickr.

Chasing cherry blossoms in Kyoto

Every spring, the cherry blossom front sweeps its way across Japan. It starts in the south and moves its way north. It is fast, fleeting and blindingly beautiful.

If you were to videotape Japan from above, and then play it back in fast forward, you'd see a cotton-candy cloud of pale pink sweeping across the country, like the way sunlight races around the globe.

Blindingly beautiful and then gone. The cherry blossoms are a perfect metaphor for the fleeting nature of life. The idea that nothing is permanent or everlasting is a recurring theme in Japanese literature and poetry. And I think maybe that's why the Japanese appreciate cherry blossoms the way they do.



The entire country takes the arrival of the cherry blossoms very seriously. The nightly news report includes a segment tracking the movement of the cherry blossom front. Pictures of cherry trees are splashed all over the front pages of newspapers.

Across Japan, crowds of people are flocking to parks and gardens for flower viewing parties (known as hanami). Wherever there’s a tree in bloom, there’s a party happening underneath it.


You just spread a plastic tarp on the ground below a cherry tree and binge on booze while celebrating the fleeting beauty of the fluttering blossoms above your head.


When a shower of pastel petals floats down with every breeze, there is a gentle sadness in knowing the lives of the flowers will soon be over. But there is a beauty in the short-lived nature of the cherry blossoms too. It is an enjoyable sadness.

The cherry trees are just starting to bloom in Kyoto. I've been out taking pictures every day, and I'll continue to do so until the very last petal falls to the ground.








Maybe it's simplistic to say the sakura is my favourite flower. Maybe it's akin to admitting you like puppies and kittens (who doesn't?). But having a deep appreciation for life's transitory moments is something that resonates with me. And there is no more perfect metaphor for the fleeting nature of life than the pale pink cherry blossom.


More photos on my flickr page.