February 26, 2015 · 12:17 am
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the ume plum blossom smells unbelievably strong tonight

 

 

 

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When the train doors open it assails you

 

 

 

 

 

 

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18 Comments

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18 responses to “the ume plum blossom smells unbelievably strong tonight”

  1. ninakane1
    February 26, 2015 at 12:28 am

    I can smell it!

    Reply
  2. jennyredhen
    February 26, 2015 at 1:21 am

    How gorgeous… spring is on its way.. there is hope!

    Reply
  3. Lilybelle
    February 26, 2015 at 1:26 am

    How beautiful! We’re still in the depths of winter here.

    Reply
  4. Nelleke Oepkes. Aka Booknose
    February 26, 2015 at 1:34 am

    Oh, the fragrance and the surprise. Messengers of spring! I make a mind dia of your beautiful pictures and in hours of need they spring to mind. And I like your careful sensitive photography with the occasional tang (Scent) or pun (Vision)
    I adore kimono’s. Thanks to your words now they have a perfume, plum, jasmine, cherry, hyacinth, many more to come …

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      February 26, 2015 at 1:44 am

      Japanese plum has a specific resonance. I think we all know cherry blossom in Europe even if it is Japanese in origin. This, though, was a scent I had never experienced until I came here and it is PUNGENT ce soir

      Reply
  5. Nelleke Oepkes. Aka Booknose
    February 26, 2015 at 1:48 am

    PS does Peach blossom smell? Chrysanthemums and my nose don’t see eye to eye. I never smelled ylang ylang, but the name …

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      February 26, 2015 at 1:50 am

      Peach blossoms are delicate; chrysanthemums reek ( I smelled them today; Japanese people eat the petals steeped in vinegar and I turned around at this cheap vegetable market in Hiratsuka wondering where the stench of chrysanthemums was coming from – still dying to smell Serge Lutens De Profundis which features the note in extremis: ylang ylang is an oil i could drink even if it killed me i love it to death)

      Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      February 26, 2015 at 1:51 am

      ylang ylang is cheap and tacky to some people, but to me it is the apex of flowers. i think i wrote about it somewhere in my indonesian posts. have you seen those?
      i was apeshit when i saw the actual flowers for the first time
      see ‘flower thief’ or something, the usual rubbish

      Reply
  6. Sister Mary
    February 26, 2015 at 4:17 am

    Does the billiwing blossom smell of PlayDoh? My friend just brought me a selection of Special Edition flavoured KitKats from the Chocolatory in Kyoto and the Special Ume one Tastes Like PlayDoh!

    Reply
  7. Boveney
    February 26, 2015 at 2:42 pm

    I have been plum blossom viewing this week at the famous sites of Yushima Shrine and Koshikawa Korakuen and couldn’t detect any fragrance at all. Maybe the Kamakura plums are more robust than the weak capital city ones??? Off topic but this reminds me, I recently went expressly to the
    Angela Flanders shop on Columbia Road to sniff Sakura, thinking it might be a special omiyage to bring back to Tokyo. But the bottled scent didn’t seem to have any relationship at all to ‘sakura’ – either the flower or the motif – and I decided it would just mystify my Japanese friends.

    Reply
    • ginzaintherain
      February 26, 2015 at 4:15 pm

      have never really smelled a convincing sakura perfume to be honest; the scent is so delicate and fragile it almost doesn’t seem worth the effort.

      The ume at my station in Kamakura, really does smell robust: that is a good word for it. Last night it was almost overpowering and permeated the air, its colour and its smell

      Reply

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