81-year-old Sachiko Asano travelled 13,679km to Africa to see jacaranda trees in bloom, one of hundreds of Japanese inspired by a culture of flower-viewing to make the trek every year.
“It was a long trip, but I wanted to come and see the jacarandas while I still can,” said the resident of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido after a two-day tour of Pretoria, known as the “Jacaranda City” for its eruption of purple and blue in the southern hemisphere spring.
Every October hundreds of Japanese, mainly retirees, fly in to see the blossoms, which are better known in Japan than other South African tourist attractions such as Table Mountain.
“In Japan we have cherry blossoms, but in South Africa it’s jacarandas. There’s nothing in Japan with that same vivid purple colour,” said Mr Nobuki Mizuno, touring the region with his wife.
Like Japan’s cherry trees, which blossom with delicate pink flowers that fall a week or so later, jacarandas bloom briefly and create a brilliant canopy over Pretoria and Johannesburg. When they fall, they carpet roads and footpaths in purple.
In Japan, cherry blossoms are symbols of the fragility and impermanence of life. They are also a national obsession: the meteorological agency gives official forecasts for the start of the cherry blossom season, while the first signs of flowers are reported on the evening news.
The Japanese bring a similar zeal to viewing jacarandas, ………..
Via Purple haze of jacarandas draws Japanese to South Africa | TODAYonline.
