Thinking Allowed: The spring in our step

We didn't come to Japan in cherry blossom season. We considered it but the timing wasn't quite right and the commercializations of Spring, while beautiful-sounding, seemed too much. We have been content with our mid-winter low tourist season visit. The gardens are generally planted to be beautiful in all seasons - and they are! I sometimes get a kick out of trying to think up what a four season garden would look like in Montreal. Perhaps there could be rock sculptures that, when covered in snow, wear their white frocks with gray or small gnarled conifers with benches plied just right to balance small mountains of snow. That being said we arrived in Kyoto surprised at how much cooler it felt than Osaka and at all the plum blossoms decorating the gardens. Did you know plum blossom season is earlier than cherry blossom season and the flowers are just as lovely? It felt early in the year and low in the thermostat for such a display of grandeur but we felt honored by the Kyoto floral hospitality. The shrine near us has a plum tree theme and garden, and is such a peaceful sweet smelling place to wander. So we have been parading around Kyoto trailed by the sweet aroma of Spring.

The children got tired of temples and shrines after the first one. I found this odd as the first temple we went to had a pitch black cave leading to an illuminated stone that grants each person who touches it one wish. Tova is still waiting and wondering why she doesn't yet have ice powers like Elsa. Kyoto feels different than Osaka - in some ways it is more quaint and etched with history and tradition and in other ways a little harder to navigate and less endearing.

Paired with the flowers blooming all around we were fortunate to be in Kyoto for the celebration of the first day of Spring - Sensubun. I took a few girls to the nearby temple where we watched geisha entertain a crowd and then the geisha and monk welcome in the new season with a shower of packets of soy beans. They have thousands of these small packets of soybeans and spent a good quarter hour yelling statements as they flung armfuls of soybean packs into the crows. The role of the crowd was to catch all the offerings thrown at them. It was a lot of fun and the girls and I have been eating our Spring offerings as we stroll through town. The first day in Spring did not mean a rise in temperature though, and two days later it flurried all day - so we had a picnic in a tree and played by the river in the snow.