It’s March again, and this year spring has arrived early in Vancouver; I sense the cherry trees are going to bloom any time.  I can not wait to see them.  To me, the cherry blossom is not only the messenger of spring, it always reminds me of Japan, where I lived for three and half years.

More than 16 years have now passed, yet I still remember the first day I arrived in Japan.  My Ph D supervisor Professor Kai in Osaka University met me at the airport.  After dinner, he left me with his mother-in-law and told me “you can call my mother-in-law obahsan and live with her until you find your own apartment”.  I met Professor Kai in an international conference in Beijing in September 1993; three months later I went to Japan and became one of his students.  Even today I feel very fortunate that he provided me with the unique opportunity to know Japan, Japanese people, and Japanese culture.

Obahsan was 80 years old and lived by herself.  She and her house were always very neat.  I was impressed by the very healthy life she lived.  She ate at least 10 types of vegetables each day and sometimes walked faster than me.   I knew little Japanese when I went to Japan.  To communicate with obahsan, I had to show obahsan the Japanese
characters in the Japanese textbook I brought with me.  Whenever I did that, obahsan would tell me how to pronounce them.  Three months later when I left obahsan, I could communicate with Japanese people using broken Japanese sentences.

Obahsan was also a very intelligent Japanese lady.  She published her first poetry book “The smell of the lantern” when she was 80 years old.  The book included 54 of her poems.  All the cute ink paintings in the book she drew herself, telling the stories of her early life in Hokkaido and her love for Mother Nature and world peace.

I spent my first New Year’s Day in Japan with obahsan.  Her granddaughter and grandson-in-law came back from US and visited her on that day.  Obahsan’s grandson-in-law was an American.  Obahsan treated three of us with typical Japanese New Year’s food.  Although she could not understand English in which three of us used to communicate, she still sat there quietly with her entire face glowing and felt she was so international.  That night she could hardly sleep.  Later she wrote a poem to describe how she felt.  War was triggered by the ignorance, power desire of the military, nationalism and religious opposition. In World War II more than ten million people including many Japanese citizens were killed in Asia.  Obahsan told me she was so happy to see that three young people from three countries previously involved in a world war could now sit and chat happily in her house.  I was deeply touched.

I left obahsan in March when the cherry trees started to bloom.  That was the first time in my life I saw those beautiful flowers.  Cherry trees only bloom for a week or so, and then the blossoms fall very rapidly.  Japanese people believe that life is not permanent but is like a blink of an eye.  Still each person should live a life as beautiful as a cherry blossom.  So today whenever I see cherry blossoms, they remind me of those days with obahsan.  Although our meeting was short, still it was unforgettable and beautiful.