Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short stuff, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a little tour, a little trip around the world
Speaker 1: and do a little Washington, DC, and do a little Japan.
Speaker 1: And that's mostly it.
Speaker 2: I think everyone knows what we're talking about then, because
Speaker 2: we're talking about cherry blossoms and the Japanese cherry tree,
Speaker 2: which does not produce actual, like edible cherries that we
Speaker 2: know and love. It does provide a little fruit berry
Speaker 2: for animals and such, but it's not that kind of
Speaker 2: cherry tree, So just stop asking. It's better.
Speaker 1: It is better. I mean, I like my cherries for sure.
Speaker 1: But if you've ever seen a cherry blossomed tree in
Speaker 1: full bloom, is it's such a sight to behold that
Speaker 1: Japan essentially created an entire cultural season around it with
Speaker 1: its own emotions and songs and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: It is really moving. If you're American or North American,
Speaker 1: or you just like traveling to the United States and
Speaker 1: happen to be here in the spring and go to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. There's a good chance that you've seen the
Speaker 1: cherry blossoms on the title basin blooming, and this is
Speaker 1: about the time they're going to start. I think in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. It's predicted the whole seasons from March
Speaker 1: twenty it's to April twelfth. Yeah, but if you really
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you're there for the peak,
Speaker 1: they usually say like the last day, last couple days
Speaker 1: maybe in March is usually when they peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Brooklyn Botanical Garden, by the way, shout
Speaker 2: out to them. I know DC gets all the press
Speaker 2: here in the United States for cherry blossoms, but they
Speaker 2: do pretty good on their own. That's where I've seen them.
Speaker 2: But in Japan is where the real show is. They've
Speaker 2: been cultivated there and really beloved since eighth century CE,
Speaker 2: and they first started appearing in poetry and in books
Speaker 2: and in pictures and things like that. They have a
Speaker 2: word for the cherry blossom, which is sakura. They have
Speaker 2: quite a few words for this, as it turns out,
Speaker 2: because it's Japan. And then they're flower gazing when the
Speaker 2: time rolls around where they're in bloom is called hanami,
Speaker 2: And it's sort of a mixed bag in Japan because
Speaker 2: it's definitely you know, spring and new beginnings, they start
Speaker 2: the new school year, then it's the start of their
Speaker 2: fiscal year. But it's also a little bittersweet because it
Speaker 2: also symbolizes like the ending of things, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason why is because cherry blossoms just
Speaker 1: stop all of a sudden at their peak. They don't
Speaker 1: like grow and peak and then fade. They grow and peak,
Speaker 1: and that's that, they just fall off and die. So
Speaker 1: there's this idea, this concept of something dying in its prime,
Speaker 1: which is in and of itself quite bittersweet. Now they
Speaker 1: have a word for that, this kind of nostalgic bittersweet
Speaker 1: feeling that's kind of associated with cherry blossoms is not
Speaker 1: which means exactly what I just said.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And I was sort of laughing on
Speaker 2: the inside there because they I got this from a
Speaker 2: lot of different sources. But this may have been someone
Speaker 2: how Stuffworks interviewed. The last name is Malot, and this
Speaker 2: guy was like, if you're watching a Japanese movie or
Speaker 2: TV show and it's some like awesome young person that
Speaker 2: is the central character, and they're walking around and you
Speaker 2: see the cherry trees blooming like that means they're going
Speaker 2: to die in this movie.
Speaker 1: For sure right. That was a John Malot. He organizes
Speaker 1: the Sakura Matsuri Japanese street festival in DC every April.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the I guess, the Japanese version of
Speaker 2: what we have in the United States, which is somebody
Speaker 2: costs into a napkin and there's blood in it.
Speaker 1: Oh. Yeah, that's always a bad sign, isn't it.
Speaker 2: You're always gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that never just becomes this thing that just happened
Speaker 1: and the movie moves on.
Speaker 2: That would be a fun red herring to put in
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 1: Though, sure, I think that would be a mcguffin.
Speaker 2: Oh God, the emails. This is the new haiku.
Speaker 1: Oh I forgot about haiku. I wonder somebody could write
Speaker 1: a haiku about what a mcguffin is.
Speaker 2: It's coming.
Speaker 1: You asked for it, so you said that. There's other
Speaker 1: words for cherry blossoms, and Japanese one of them is
Speaker 1: okahka and tying into the idea of something dying young
Speaker 1: and it's prime. That's what Japanese Kamakazi pilots were called
Speaker 1: in World War Two Oka, and that's what they're planes.
Speaker 1: They're essentially human driven missile planes were called Oka as well,
Speaker 1: and they had like cherry blossoms painted on the side
Speaker 1: of the plane.
Speaker 2: That symbolism all over the place. So let's take a break.
Speaker 2: We've covered some of Japan, and now we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about DC right after this.
Speaker 1: Josh and.
Speaker 2: South here, all right, So we promised talk of Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. The most famous purveyor provider rather of cherry
Speaker 2: blossoms here in the United States. And it all started
Speaker 2: on March twenty eighth, nineteen twelve, when the Washington Post
Speaker 2: ran a little story with the headline, missus Taft plants
Speaker 2: a tree. And that is when Helen Nellie Taft, wife
Speaker 2: of William Howard Taft, the President, planted a couple of
Speaker 2: cherry blossom trees that were gifts from Tokyo. But the
Speaker 2: story is a little more interesting than that, right.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently the Washington Post journalist left in the middle
Speaker 1: of it just a plant's a treat, So it's not
Speaker 1: even a correct ineffective headline. Yeah, but yes, that is
Speaker 1: just the broad stroke. That's the end result of decades
Speaker 1: of organizing and campaigning by a woman named Eliza Skidmore.
Speaker 1: She was the first board member of Sorry, the first
Speaker 1: woman board member of the National geographic Society. She was
Speaker 1: very well traveled. She loved to go to Japan, and
Speaker 1: so having traveled to Japan, she had been exposed to
Speaker 1: the cherry blossoms and was like, these are the greatest
Speaker 1: things ever. We should get some of these back in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that she thought this would be no
Speaker 1: problem whatsoever. Well, fast forward almost thirty years and she
Speaker 1: finally gets this thing done, but it's thanks to the
Speaker 1: intervention of two other people who just also happened to
Speaker 1: be men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I do love this quote though. I
Speaker 2: want to read it because it just shows how enchanted
Speaker 2: she was Potomac Park there on the river, they were
Speaker 2: reclaiming it at the time, and this was an eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty five and she wrote that basically like they had
Speaker 2: to plant something there in this space, and she said
Speaker 2: they might as well plant the most beautiful thing in
Speaker 2: the world, the Japanese cherry tree. Yeah, it's very sweet.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you mentioned a couple of dudes. One guy
Speaker 2: was named David Fairchild. And it's kind of cool when
Speaker 2: you look back at how all these convergent things kind
Speaker 2: of take place to make something happen. I love stories
Speaker 2: like this, but This was a guy who was the
Speaker 2: He worked at the USDA, which is a new thing
Speaker 2: at the time for our Department of Agriculture. Is a
Speaker 2: job that I want. I don't if they still have it.
Speaker 2: But he was a plant explorer, so he would travel
Speaker 2: all over the world looking for plants that they could
Speaker 2: cultivate in the United States.
Speaker 1: They do not still have that, man, I.
Speaker 2: Can't imagine anything better.
Speaker 1: They had it until like last year.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, and I wish told me so.
Speaker 1: David Child was like, Hey, these actually can work in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. I think he transplanted a few and showed
Speaker 1: that they could live. Skidmore found out about this, and
Speaker 1: she was like, Okay, I'm going to try one last time.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get in touch with this new first lady,
Speaker 1: Nellie Taft, and I'm going to say, please, for love God,
Speaker 1: hear me out about these cherry trees. Everybody thinks it's
Speaker 1: a good idea. Please, let's start planning cherry trees in DC.
Speaker 1: She got a reply two days later after she sent
Speaker 1: the letter, and Nellie Taff said, I have taken up
Speaker 1: the matter, and the promised the trees, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden things just started looking up for Eliza Skidmore's idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, after twenty five years, can't imagine how
Speaker 2: she felt. She got in touch with a guy named
Speaker 2: doctor Takamini who was a wealthy Japanese chemist, and he
Speaker 2: had been beating the cherry tree drum for New York
Speaker 2: City for a while and she knew this. They were
Speaker 2: fellow enthusiasts. So she said, hey, missus taff said, like,
Speaker 2: she's going to try to make this thing happen. He
Speaker 2: was like, well, I'm a wealthy Japanese chemist, so I
Speaker 2: can pull some strings. Why don't we make this like
Speaker 2: an official, like state gift from Japan to the United States.
Speaker 1: The great idea. So Japan said, here are two thousand
Speaker 1: cherry blossom trees, and also here's a bunch of insects
Speaker 1: and disease in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fortunately they're lousy with Japanese beetles and god knows what
Speaker 1: disease that cherry trees get. Yeah, so they had to
Speaker 1: burn them. And Japan was like, did you have to
Speaker 1: like take a photograph and send it to us of
Speaker 1: all the cherry trees burning. Yeah, So they send them
Speaker 1: three thousand more and those are the ones that included
Speaker 1: the two that missus Taff planted. The next day after those,
Speaker 1: that second shipment of three and twenty healthy trees arrived.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: I guess they hedge their bets and sent the extra
Speaker 2: thousand plus twenty, which is kind of funny. They line
Speaker 2: the title basin there in DC Potomac Park kind of
Speaker 2: right there around was it the Jefferson Memorial? I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gorgeous. If you've ever been there, I know you
Speaker 2: lived in DC, right, so she's probably all over that.
Speaker 1: I bet oh, all over she would roll in them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Park rangers would be like, please, you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: do that again. I can't help myself.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's DC. You know peak bloom you can,
Speaker 2: Like Josh said earlier, you never know exactly when it's
Speaker 2: going to happen. So it's kind of one of those things.
Speaker 2: It can be heartbreaking if you, you know, have to
Speaker 2: book your ticket ahead of time and you have no
Speaker 2: flexibility in your schedule. There have been plenty of people
Speaker 2: that missed the Cherry Bloom in DC when they have
Speaker 2: gone just for that, So yeah, I know it's it's
Speaker 2: super sad when that happens. So maybe don't aim. This
Speaker 2: is my advice, maybe don't aim for peak bloom. Just
Speaker 2: try and be there at some point during that that timeframe.
Speaker 1: And it is something to see. You're just surrounded by
Speaker 1: blooming cherry trees.
Speaker 2: Gorgeous.
Speaker 1: But you can also I mean, if you can't make
Speaker 1: it to DC, or you made it and you miss
Speaker 1: your mark, you can plant a cherry tree. They're really beautiful.
Speaker 1: I would recommend the autumn analysis because they're not only
Speaker 1: blooms in the spring. It blooms in the autumn. Two
Speaker 1: do you have one? No, I planted plenty of them,
Speaker 1: but I do not. We have a weeping cherry. It
Speaker 1: only blooms once a year. Is that why it's said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like an autumn.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I have not. Oh man, have I seen
Speaker 2: the DC. I don't know if I've actually seen the
Speaker 2: DC bloom. I feel like I did one time visiting
Speaker 2: my sister years ago. But I also think I would
Speaker 2: have known it because there's so many more trees than
Speaker 2: even the ones in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've not seen the DC ones unless I
Speaker 1: just don't remember them. But we were in Japan around
Speaker 1: this time, but a little before it was, so there
Speaker 1: was some sporadic blooming.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing I do remember is that the Starbucks
Speaker 1: there had a sakura like coffee latte. Oh, they just
Speaker 1: made up a taste because obviously cherry blossoms don't have
Speaker 1: a taste. But it's one of the best tasting lattes
Speaker 1: I've ever had, and of course it was right.
Speaker 2: Can you recall a note an e flat wiseacre?
Speaker 1: You got anything else?
Speaker 2: No, Just you know, it's not just DC and Japan.
Speaker 2: These things grow and temperate climates all over the world,
Speaker 2: and they're certainly planted a lot for you know, tourism
Speaker 2: and the wow factor, so you can you can see
Speaker 2: them all over the place. So just if DC and
Speaker 2: Japan are off the map for you, you can probably
Speaker 2: find some nearby.
Speaker 1: Sure. I think that's it for short stuff, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that means we're out.
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