![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Our Rashi and Ahh! toe neicha
There was a cherry tree by the side of the driveway at the house I grew up in. A very *tall* cherry tree, crowded up against the house next door. If it ever had blossoms it's more than I noticed, though for some reason I did notice the few handfuls that fell in the spring my father died. There was a cherry tree in the back garden of the house I moved into four years later. Still is. That one was not, in those days at least, a very *tall* cherry tree and the blossoms were definitely in view out my study window. I don't recall noticing them at all the two springs I was there to see them.
Then I went to Japan.
And now, by god, I notice cherry blossoms wherever they are.
Thick green leaves rustling in a cool wind is not something I ever focused on per se, though I did notice them occasionally without having a word for what I was seeing. 'Leaves blowing in the wind.' How poetic. But now I see them and think 'Aoarashi' even when, as today, it's not the green leaves of spring blowing in the fresh cool (Aahhhh! cool!!!) wind, but the summer ones. I wonder if there's a kigo (season word) for the green leaves of summer, which on sunny unpolluted days like today are a waving mass of green cloud-like forms. Though n-e Canuck foliage is nothing at all as dense as the Japanese version, nor the west coast one as well, probably. (I was only once in Vancouver proper to see and didn't much care for it: green thought in a **humid grey** green shade, is what it was. Also the reflex sense of those things are too damn big. In Japan they're not too damn big, is the point.)
I do remember the green of Japan Augusts, which is very green against a very blue sky and punctuated by very loud cicadas. Oh- and look! A handy list of season words. And look! "Wind in the verdure (aoarashi, all summer)." So even though the poetic summer is May through July, meaning August isn't (hahaha which is why I always thought the kigo 'lingering heat' so hilarious. Yeah, the lingering heat of August tee-hee) what I'm seeing today is indeed aoarashi.
Of course, I couldn't think about the thing properly until I read about it in a book and was given a word for it. This is what art is to nature, the former beng indispensible for fully appreciating the latter, at least by me. (The Japanese 'art nature', ahh toe neicha, アートネイチャー, is stuff for making people's hair grow back, mostly men's.)
Then I went to Japan.
And now, by god, I notice cherry blossoms wherever they are.
Thick green leaves rustling in a cool wind is not something I ever focused on per se, though I did notice them occasionally without having a word for what I was seeing. 'Leaves blowing in the wind.' How poetic. But now I see them and think 'Aoarashi' even when, as today, it's not the green leaves of spring blowing in the fresh cool (Aahhhh! cool!!!) wind, but the summer ones. I wonder if there's a kigo (season word) for the green leaves of summer, which on sunny unpolluted days like today are a waving mass of green cloud-like forms. Though n-e Canuck foliage is nothing at all as dense as the Japanese version, nor the west coast one as well, probably. (I was only once in Vancouver proper to see and didn't much care for it: green thought in a **humid grey** green shade, is what it was. Also the reflex sense of those things are too damn big. In Japan they're not too damn big, is the point.)
I do remember the green of Japan Augusts, which is very green against a very blue sky and punctuated by very loud cicadas. Oh- and look! A handy list of season words. And look! "Wind in the verdure (aoarashi, all summer)." So even though the poetic summer is May through July, meaning August isn't (hahaha which is why I always thought the kigo 'lingering heat' so hilarious. Yeah, the lingering heat of August tee-hee) what I'm seeing today is indeed aoarashi.
Of course, I couldn't think about the thing properly until I read about it in a book and was given a word for it. This is what art is to nature, the former beng indispensible for fully appreciating the latter, at least by me. (The Japanese 'art nature', ahh toe neicha, アートネイチャー, is stuff for making people's hair grow back, mostly men's.)
no subject
Aaaah! Here it's a lingering sticky heat. With the South Easterlies! ^__^ At the moment anyway.
no subject
The other thing is that by them 'summer' is May June and July, and scuse me, but in Japan those are three separate seasons: warm dry/ cool wet/ HOT. In a proper year rainy season ends mid-June and you go overnight from highs of 17 to highs of 30+. But that also means there's only two weeks of summer heat before the 'heat that lingers' starts.
no subject
That was one thing I loved about Liza Dalby's "Tale of Murasaki" was the description of each waking season...and there were so many.
A friend who is there now hopes that August will be cooler...but if what you say is right then in two weeks it will be the lingering heat. She hails from your neck of the woods as well. Hmmm I wonder should I warn her! She is there for a year. *is envious* ^__^
One day I'll get there! Hee!
no subject
The thing about August is everyone goes away for o-Bon, so in Tokyo at least you have a week of blue skies and minimal pollution. And the Augst heat is somehow drier than July's- but again, that's Tokyo.
You will. Even I, with no family, didn't make it there till I was 40.
no subject
On a related note, though, I'm going to be town week after next. ^^ Would you happen to have time for crepes some weekday afternoon? (I think right now the only weekday I have reserved for anything is Monday.)
no subject
And yes, the cherry blossoms are in May sometimes. By this point even the cherries are gone.
no subject