Under a pink cloud
Published Apr 2, 2026 12:05 am
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Updated Apr 1, 2026 04:06 pm
MEDIUM RARE
Was it magic? A dream?
There we were, standing, walking, musing under a pink cloud of cherry trees in full bloom at a park an hour’s drive from Osaka, Japan, and it felt like a reverie. People sat in the shade under the trees. Children gamboled on the grass but they did not shout or make noises.
The atmosphere was almost church-like. But then it has been said of the Japanese that, almost like the ancient Greeks, they “worship” beauty in all its forms, art or nature.
We had chosen March 28, 2026 to gaze at the cherry trees in full bloom — sakura — as forecast by Japan’s meteorologists, and they did not disappoint. Park officials made sure the food vans peddling water and sandwiches, ramen and sweets were kept a good distance away to prevent commerce from spoiling the view.
And what a view! The flowers so pink, so delicate, so flimsy one had to wonder how they would stay on the branches before being blown away by the wind, or spoiled by birds and people. It was then I recalled one of my favorite haiku since college days:
Fallen petals
Rising back
To the branch
Ahh . . . butterflies.
But those baby-pink blossoms were not the first to thrill me upon landing in Japan this time. Fact is, my first sighting was that of white blossoms – white as snow in full bloom and not a single green leaf on this solitary tree on a sidewalk in the city as cars whizzed by and pedestrians hurried past. I asked our taxi driver, “Sakura?” To which he replied with a nod and a smile, “Yes, sakura.”
Then I remembered how, back home, some Quezon City VIP had ordered the transfer of a hundred trees surrounding Quezon Memorial Circle to make way for a parking lot! A parking lot 4 km all around for cars sitting on concrete instead of trees providing shade and beauty to countless people throughout the ages! The person who ordered or approved the pullout of those trees should have been sent to jail! Maybe that person got away with it, but not entirely, because he was eventually charged with another offense.
Mother Nature takes care of her own.