Bairin Koen, One Year Later

It has been some time since my last post.  Matt and I are frantically cleaning and packing, getting rid of things and making seemingly endless runs to the post office.  It hardly seems like it's been nearly two years since we first laid eyes on our temporary home, yet here we are, at the end of our run as ALTs.  I won't miss the job, but I will miss the friends we made here.  Japan affected me deeply and I am grateful for the opportunity to live, work, and travel in this incredible country.  There will be time for reflective essays later, when we have toured Europe and are again in the ranks of America's unemployed youth... for now we must continue packing and cleaning.

To keep you busy as you wait for the thrilling conclusion of our world travels (did I mention we have quite the itinerary planned?), here are some shots from this year's plum blossom festival in Bairin Koen.  We visited on March 11, 2012, which you may know was the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake.  Last year we went to the festival a few days after the quake, still reeling from the physical and emotional aftershocks.  It seemed fitting to visit again.

This year the colors were more vivid and spanned the white-pink-red spectrum.  Matt, reading the signs on the trees, pointed out the subtle differences in the blossoms.  Above is a two-tired flower with two rows of petals and below is a blossom with single-tier petals.  It's a small and utterly beautiful detail that I may have overlooked otherwise, because I sometimes spend too long looking at the larger picture.  It reminded me that the component parts of a thing are sometimes more striking than the thing in its entirety.  I admit this next bit is cheesy, but it bears stating that I would like to look at my life in the coming months like I was able to look at these ume blossoms.  I'd like to bring the focus in and see the details.

See you next in Nagasaki!  日本ガンバレ!