Now as I've mentioned before, hydrangeas are a symbol of the rainy season. The Japanese word for hydrangea is "ajisai." The kanji, or Chinese characters are "purple," "sun," and "flower." (紫陽花)
When I first learned that the Japanese associated hydrangeas with the rainy season, I had no idea how deep their fondness for them went.
It seems the Japanese are fond of flowers in general, but I think more so than that, they appreciate them as part of the season.
If the year is a clock, then, in Japan, the flowers mark each hour.
And how!
My experience of flowers in Japan has been that, you hardly ever see them. But once the season of the year for a particular flower arrives, suddenly, there they are!
All year long, hydrangeas lie dormant. But once the rainy season begins, they seem to just pop up out of nowhere!
The same is true for almost any other flower the Japanese appreciate.
Cherry blossoms. Dogwoods. Hydrangeas. Morning glories. Cosmos. Plum. You name it.
It seems trees and plants are strategically placed in Japan, so that at any one time, a particular flower is blooming, letting you know what time of the year it is.
When you see plum blossoms, you must be at the beginning of the year when spring begins.
Cherry blossoms tell you you're in April, and they usually accompany the beginning of the school year. (In Japan, school begins in April and ends in March.)
Then the hydrangeas bloom, accompanied by gray skies and rainy days.
Morning glories bloom, ushering in the sounds of summer.
Fields of cosmos flowers bid farewell to the summer and to the sun.
Plum blossoms herald the arrival of spring.
Cherry blossoms bloom once again and the Japanese get the feeling that yet another year has passed, and a new one is just beginning.
April seems to mark various new beginnings in Japan.
But we'll get to that later.
The rain continues to sing to me at night, and I have decided that I wanted to post pictures of hydrangeas that I took around my neighborhood.
I knew what hydrangeas were before I came to Japan, but for one, I had no idea the were called hydrangeas. I only knew the Spanish name for them, which is "hortencia."
Next, I thought hydrangeas were like, only one species of flower.
NOPE!
It turns out there is a myriad of varieties of the plant, and the Japanese appreciate them all.
And did you know that the bunches of flowers in which hydrangeas grow are called "panicles?" You learn something new every day! :-D
Here are the pictures I took this rainy season.
No comments:
Post a Comment