It’s spring in the Northwest and the flowering plum and cherry trees are luminous against the gray-green of the firs. I never see the return of the cherry blossoms without getting homesick for Kyoto.
I had heard much of Japan’s cherry blossom time before I moved to Japan in the early 1980s, but I had lived in southern California too long to expect much show from spring. So I wasn’t disappointed, my first spring in Kyoto, when the cold wind and rain beat the blossoms to the ground almost as soon as they appeared.