{"id":8,"date":"2005-04-08T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-08T09:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-04-08\/8"},"modified":"2007-04-10T00:26:28","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T15:26:28","slug":"8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2005-04-08\/8","title":{"rendered":"The Ugliness of Japanese Cherry-Blossom Viewing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"img_center\"><a\nhref=\"\/i\/pic\/2005-04-08_17:53.20__00564.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/i\/pic\/2005-04-08_17:53:20__00564__4.jpg\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\"\nid=\"i2005_04_08_17_53_20__00564__4\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n\n<p>Cherry-blossom viewing can be wonderful, but only if you can find <span class='nobr'>a\nquiet,<\/span> relatively alone place in which to enjoy it. Otherwise, it's just an\nugly spectacle. <span class='nobr'>A few minutes<\/span>' walk from where <span class='nobr'>I live<\/span> is Kyoto's\n&#8220;Maruyama Park&#8221;, famous for its 600 cherry trees, which are\nappropriately beautiful now that spring has sprung. <span class='nobr'>I went there<\/span> today, not\nto see the trees, but rather to see how bad the people were.<\/p>\n<!--more-->\n\n<p>They were plentiful. People milling about everywhere, with festival\nvenders hawking octopus balls and squid, people sitting in loud smelly\ngroups on blue vinyl sheets drinking beer and smoking, among tour guides\nexplaining to their charges that they'd be moving along soon. <span class='nobr'>It was everything<\/span> but beautiful.<\/p>\n\n<p>For comparison, see <a\nhref=\"\/i\/pic\/2004-06-06_18:40.39__09222.jpg\">this\npicture<\/a>, as well as <a\nhref=\"\/i\/pic\/2004-04-19_07:55.42__00002.jpg\">this\none<\/a>, each of the same area, but taken at <span class='nobr'>a more<\/span> tranquil time.<\/p>\n\n<p>It was in stark contrast to the many beautiful scenes I'd seen in the\nprevious hour going around town with Anthony, by bike. I'll post some of\nthose (certainly lacking) pictures soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherry-blossom viewing can be wonderful, but only if you can find a quiet, relatively alone place in which to enjoy it. Otherwise, it's just an ugly spectacle. A few minutes' walk from where I live is Kyoto's \"Maruyama Park\", famous for its 600 cherry trees, which are appropriately beautiful now that spring has sprung. I went there today, not to see the trees, but rather to see how bad the people were.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}