May 1 2014 A tale of Kodaiji 
Road covered with fallen petals That wouldn't have been noticed If cherry blossoms were blooming There is beauty in every moment Seoul is clothed in fresh verdure, but the impressions from the cherry blossoms I saw in Kyoto in April are still so fresh that I cannot help but write a few lines on it. I heard that cherry blossoms are originally from Jeju. Now I have gotten used to seeing cherry blossom trees as they are everywhere in Korea, and they even planted young cherry blossom trees right in front of my home in Seoul.
While I was living in Washington D.C., I viewed 6,000 cherry blossom trees along Potomac River in front of the Jefferson Memorial amid a throng of people every year, cherry blossoms which Japan had sent many years ago. While I was living in Bethesda Maryland, the cherry blossom lane in front of my house was so splendid that it attracted a lot of people in spring, so many in fact that the police had to control the road. Then one day in Spring, I went to Kyoto.
The city felt eerily familiar, probably because Kyoto was where many people from Baekje of Korea went after the Baekje Kingdom fell 1400 years ago.
Kyoto had been the capital of Japan for 1100 years and has a lot of palaces and temples.
I went to see cherry blossoms and they were beautiful beyond description.
As Kyoto was only one hour flight away from Seoul, so I thought that I had to see cherry blossoms in spring after long winter.
Yet it was just my notion. Cutting my daily life into pieces wasn’t as easy as cutting radishes and it was all the more difficult to go flower viewing when the time was just right. So I always ended up going flower viewing just before or after the peak.
This year, I went there on April 14th to give a lecture. They were still beautiful even though they were falling.
If I had to pick one place among many places right now, I would pick 'Kodaiji' in front of the ryokan that I stayed. It's on 'Nenenomichi' Nene, the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Kodaiji and prayed for her late husband for 17 years in it. It is a beautiful garden, even for Kyoto standards and is called the culmination of garden art.
I cannot forget the first time I saw it.
It was a silent night and a good number of people were kneeling on a long wood floor looking at one cherry blossom tree. It seemed like they were sitting there for a few hours. Everything was mystique. the drooping cherry blossoms, gentle breeze and people sitting elegantly there.
The round cherry blossom tree I am viewing this spring.
The harmony of the hand that created it and trimmed it is still a culmination of art, I think. And what more could be wanted if the harmony of several houses that look elegant as if they are bearing our ancestors' breath and garden and the viewer's eyes deepened by the glamorous light that went through the long, bitter winter are added to that? I am writing 'A tale of Kodaiji' in the hope that you would be able to see them in good time of spring. Kyoto is too good to see alone and leave behind This world is even better to leave behind 
Drooping Shidarezakura flowers, transformed into star flowers in the night sky | 
