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Jul. 29th, 2008 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aliengeekgirlPrompt 46.3 What's your first memory?
Sakura.
I was two and a half years old. We’d moved to Osaka about six months earlier, and it was spring. Grandmother kept telling me that there was a special time coming, that I would see the most beautiful thing I could ever see. Even father was looking forward to it. It was time for the cherry blossom festivals.
In later years, I would learn how eagerly the festival is awaited in Japan, that the television would bring updates of the sakura zensen as it moved northwards across Japan. I would avidly watch the weather reports, waiting to see how close to Osaka the cherry blossom front had moved today. I’d learn how important the festival was to everyone, the meanings behind it.
But I will always remember the first time I saw sakura trees.
There were thousands of people walking towards the ‘Cherry Blossom Lane’ in the Japan Mint gardens. It’s the most popular place in Osaka to view the precious flowers. I remember I started off holding my mother’s hand, but in the end my father picked me up and carried me, for fear of losing me in the crowd. I could sense the excitement in the air as we walked along.
And suddenly I saw them. A vast area of white. The thousands of trees in the garden were all in bloom, and each one looked like a fluffy white cloud. I wriggled in my father’s arms, trying to get a better look. At some point my mouth must have dropped open in surprise, as he gently closed it with a smile at me. I remember looking up at the tops of the trees and the occasional flower dropping quietly onto me.
As we walked along, my father quietly told me about sakura, though it was only when I was older that I understood what he was saying. “The flowers don’t live for long, Toshiko. A week at most, then they wither and die. They are there to remind us about life. The beauty and joy the flowers bring are only there for such a short time, and then they fade and die. Life is much the same. A quiet beginning, a brief burst of joy, and then we die.”
Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word count: 373
Sakura.
I was two and a half years old. We’d moved to Osaka about six months earlier, and it was spring. Grandmother kept telling me that there was a special time coming, that I would see the most beautiful thing I could ever see. Even father was looking forward to it. It was time for the cherry blossom festivals.
In later years, I would learn how eagerly the festival is awaited in Japan, that the television would bring updates of the sakura zensen as it moved northwards across Japan. I would avidly watch the weather reports, waiting to see how close to Osaka the cherry blossom front had moved today. I’d learn how important the festival was to everyone, the meanings behind it.
But I will always remember the first time I saw sakura trees.
There were thousands of people walking towards the ‘Cherry Blossom Lane’ in the Japan Mint gardens. It’s the most popular place in Osaka to view the precious flowers. I remember I started off holding my mother’s hand, but in the end my father picked me up and carried me, for fear of losing me in the crowd. I could sense the excitement in the air as we walked along.
And suddenly I saw them. A vast area of white. The thousands of trees in the garden were all in bloom, and each one looked like a fluffy white cloud. I wriggled in my father’s arms, trying to get a better look. At some point my mouth must have dropped open in surprise, as he gently closed it with a smile at me. I remember looking up at the tops of the trees and the occasional flower dropping quietly onto me.
As we walked along, my father quietly told me about sakura, though it was only when I was older that I understood what he was saying. “The flowers don’t live for long, Toshiko. A week at most, then they wither and die. They are there to remind us about life. The beauty and joy the flowers bring are only there for such a short time, and then they fade and die. Life is much the same. A quiet beginning, a brief burst of joy, and then we die.”
Toshiko Sato
Torchwood
Word count: 373
