I took all these photos last weekend at Showa Kinen Koen, a large park near Tachikawa Station in Tokyo. It occurred to me that all this beauty unfolds in order, and you wouldn’t want to stop it in motion. The cherry blossoms appear when the winds shift and the warmth of Spring arrives. They are most beautiful at the margin when it’s neither cold nor hot. If you long for May, the best weather of the year and blue skies, then you can’t hold on. As the air warms, the blossoms fall; but then you get the tulips and the poppies! There is beauty all around in May, and people are out enjoying it, but the Cherry trees become anonymous green. Live in the moment, and keep moving with it.

A crowed field of poppies, and another field crowded with people.

You can always find another way to immerse yourself in the moment, like this boy repeatedly plunging into the dust.

I posted another shot like this previously. One of the attractions of the park is the giant, bouncy domes. Have you got a better word for them?

A girl catching falling Cherry blossoms in her hat…

Tulips, etc. My guess is that every Spring Japanese photographers take billions of pictures of Cherry blossoms, tulips, and every other flower in sight. Billions. The sheer volume of expensive camera equipment dedictated to photographing flowers is stunning. I have less than a dozen tulip photos to my name, and that’s okay.

As the blossoms fall from a Cherry tree, another tree hasn’t even gotten started yet.