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花見 hanami
Picnic under the cherry blossoms.
What does hanami mean?
Blue tarp, convenience store food, drinks, and roughly one glance per hour at the actual flowers. The blossoms last about a week, which is the whole point.
Example
来週みんなで花見しようよ。
Let's all go see the cherry blossoms next week.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
Culture note
At company parties the newest employee is often sent out early to claim a spot under a good tree. Weather forecasts track the blossom front like a sports season.
The story behind hanami
Blossom viewing is older than the cherry monopoly. In the earliest centuries of court poetry the flower worth travelling for was the plum, imported along with Chinese literature, and only later did sakura take the throne and keep it. What turned viewing into a party was the Edo period, when the shogunate planted cherries along riverbanks and temple grounds where ordinary townspeople could drink under them.
The modern version is unchanged in spirit. A blue tarp, convenience store fried chicken, and the newest member of the team sent out at dawn to hold the ground. There is even a proverb, hana yori dango, dumplings over flowers, which admits the whole truth: the blossoms are the excuse and the excuse is excellent.
Get hanami in your pocket
花見 is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
