Sunday journalling prompt

On the travelling soul

On Monday morning, we caught a coach back to Tokyo to begin the last leg of our journey around Japan. As we left Lake Yamanaka, the local cherry trees were still in tight bud, but as we made our way back down to sea level, I started to notice the sakura again. It was finally out in force, dotted amongst the coniferous trees in the deep valleys we crossed, pom-poms of pink against the dark greens.

In central Tokyo, the hanami – or cherry blossom viewing – was in its fevered last stages. Petals were already falling like snow, filling the air with fluttering specks and polka-dotting the pavements. Nevertheless, people crowded around each tree, pointing and photographing and chattering excitedly. I might have expected a jadedness to have taken over by this late stage, but everyone I spoke to was still delighted by the whole thing. In the many taxis we took this week – a concession to H’s bad foot – I lost count of the times that a driver would point at a tree and say, ‘Sakura!’ The childlike glee was unmistakable.  

I’ve spent the last year saying that children notice wonderful things that adults choose to ignore, but in this house, we are beginning to travel towards teenage years, and wonder is becoming more scarce. To my surprise, Bert loved the sakura, but he was absolutely ‘meh’ about mountains. At first, it made me angry; what a privilege to become so inured to beauty at such a tender age! But H – who spent a lot of his own childhood in Switzerland – pointed out that he used to find mountains boring, too. ‘We were up and down the Alps all the time,’ he said. ‘I got the point where I thought, Ugh, not another bloody mountain.’ He thought for a while. ‘I always liked yodelling, though.’