Plum blossoms and Hope in Yushima

The plum blossoms on the grounds of Yushima Shrine were just beginning to poke out of their compact capsules this afternoon when I visited the shrine's plum festival. The heads of the many visitors from the neighborhood were also barely poking from overstuffed down jackets protecting them from the near freezing temperatures on a damp and overcast day. Many were holding their mobile phones above their heads trying to get close-up snapshots of the few tiny blossoms. They looked like members of a hazmat team scanning the trees with geiger counters. Not an entirely unexpected sight in this radiation-sensitive city.

Yushima Shrine is near Tokyo University, sometimes referred to as the Harvard of Japan. The influence of Todai, as it is commonly called by Japanese, can be seen in the thousands of small wooden wish tablets tied to wooden frames erected on the grounds of the shrine. Students come here to pray for good results on exams and for success in gaining entrance to the most prestigious universities. The prayers on tablet after tablet contain the characters for "university". It's a poignant sight to watch as earnest teenagers tie their hopes to the bulging frames as their families look over their shoulders. Entrance to the most prestigious universities in Japan are exceedingly hard to come by and the vast majority of the young people will not make it into nearby Todai, or the handful of other top universities in Japan.

But where there are blossoms in February they can't help but be hopeful.