Feature: Cherry blossom season in Japan a time for melancholic metaphors, poetry and booze-fueled folly

Scores of locals and tourists alike are flocking to Japan's parks, riverbanks and famous gardens to view the fleeting cherry blossoms (known in Japanese as Sakura) that maintain their resplendent whitish-pink full-bloom sometimes for as briefly as a couple of days depending on the capricious weather at this time of year.

A gusty day, or a downpour of rain, as the ephemeral emergence of the pretty little flowerets herald the end of winter and the beginning of spring, can swiftly see the dainty petals stripped from trees and scattered mercilessly below their branches on the grass or concrete below, the latter creating a melancholic juxtaposition as nature's fragility briefly blends and brightens colorless man-made roads, pavements and walkways.

As many revelers in the country's capital enjoy Hanami (cherry blossom viewing), including groups of colleagues, friends, families, and the cutest of sweethearts exchanging sweet nothings, with the festivities often involving copious amounts of alcohol and food consumed while sitting under the radiant blooms, for others, this time of year is profoundly more solitary and a time for deep, lugubrious contemplation.

"The buds begin to bloom and everyone gets excited, then the petals emerge and people make plans to get together with friends and have a good time, and while the blossoms are in full-bloom the scenes can be absolutely breathtaking," Shinichi Tanaka, 49, who said he worked for an "irrelevant company, doing meaningless and menial tasks day in and day out," told Xinhua, somewhat morosely.

"But in the blink of an eye, they're (Sakura) gone. It's a metaphor for life. Everything is in a constant state of transience and flux. There are no constants and one day, with little or no warning, it will all be over," said Tanaka, half to himself, adding that this time of year is Japan's most "bitter-sweet season."

"More than anything, including my birthday and New Year's day, when the Sakura fall from the trees and I see them helplessly scattered on the ground, lifeless, listless and crumpled, I realize, like a cruel slap in the face, that time has past and I'm one year older," he continued.

"I realize that in the past year nothing has really changed, yet so much has. That I'm no longer as young as I was, and that the future is closer than it ever was. As is the end. It's so hard to describe the feeling. Melancholy doesn't do it justice," Tanaka said, before meandering off down a side street, away from the hullabaloo of those, ostensibly, having fun in Sangenjaya, an uptown district in Tokyo with a downtown vibe, where tradition coexists with modernity; the affluent with the cash-strapped.

But while there are those who seem to derive some hard-to-understand enjoyment in the moody metaphors attached to Sakura, others flip the script and see the glass as half full, rather than half empty.

"We Japanese can all intuitively sense the spirit of 'wabi sabi' in things that surround us that are at once mysterious and beautiful. The aesthetic or viewpoint of 'wabi sabi' holds the idea of imperfection, impermanence, and incompletion as being intrinsically beautiful," explained Koji Yanai, 34, who described himself as a "hopeless poet and romantic" moonlighting as a sales clerk.

Yanai, carrying a tatty, inch-thick notebook full of his musings and likely never-to-be published poetry, continued to give an impromptu recital to passersby along the banks of the famed Meguro River, adjacent to Naka Meguro station, a mecca for the city's trendy urbanites.

"We are one, when we are one. We shine, when we are bright. Our smiles are the energy of the Sakura; Sakura is a gift to our souls. Not ours to keep, but ours to remember, for another year. A blessing. Do not frown, do not rush. Slow down and breathe. Just breathe. For soon we will wish for breath," went Yanai's recital, that, rather than being met with rapturous applause, was completely ignored by everyone in the vicinity.

Yanai's prose, however, was a fitting example of how cherry blossom season in Japan, while commonly appearing to be a time of fun and frolics, if the multitude of beaming group photos and smiling selfies posted on social media sites by Japan's netizens suggest, can in fact mean something quite different for all who behold the delicate five-petaled treasures; the most popular of the cultivated species blooming in the capital and across the nation right now.

"It's less about winter ending and more about the fact that summer's coming and we can go to the beach again, hang out in a la carte cafes, actually we can hang out on the streets again in general, but most importantly it's about this!" exclaimed Shizuka, 22, opting to use, or perhaps only just being able to remember, her first name, as she thrust a large can of pink grapefruit-flavored Chu-hai in the air, the size of the can seeming impossibly large considering the youngster's petite statue.

"Sake!" She shouted. "Alcohol-u!" she repeated in Japanese-English. "Let's drinking together!" She demanded nonsensically, her junior high school English grammar lessons apparently long-since forgotten, as her friend, Eriko, briskly replaced the can of booze with a bottle of Evian water, seemingly unbeknown to her inebriated friend, who went on to down the bottle of H2O as if her life depended on it.

While the likes of Shizuka perhaps need little excuse to have a party, others find the whole ordeal something of an annual chore and wish Hanami didn't come with so many obligations.

"I have to go to separate work parties with colleagues from three different departments in my office, and one department is mostly guys who get horribly drunk and act obnoxiously, which I hate," lamented Hisako Kurita. "That's three parties, where I'm forced to drink with people I, quite frankly, dislike," she added. "I don't even get paid overtime," the 25-year-old office worker complained.

"And then I have to do Hanami with my actual friends, which is fine, I guess, but I'm not really an 'outdoorsy' type and would rather have a girls' night in a wine bar. And then I'll probably have to do something with my boyfriend, which I don't really have the energy for," a lackluster Kurita said.

"I think I'd rather just have one big party with everyone, take a few photos, drink a few beers, and get it over and done with, and then go home and sleep," Kurita said, just before one of her male colleagues approached and, somewhat inexplicably, yelled at the top of his lungs: "Japan!" before asking directions to the nearest public lavatory, of which there were none in the vicinity.

"You see what I mean?" Kurita murmured, her face half livid, half embarrassed for her rowdy coworker.

"Don't get me wrong, the cherry blossoms themselves are absolutely beautiful, it's the people that spoil them," she said, nodding towards her colleague who had ducked behind a tree, presumably to relieve himself. "I'm staying home next year," she said. Endit