May Flower Review –

May Flower Review – Gentleness that blooms along the roadside without permission 🌸🌿💮 May in Japan is the season when everything comes back to life after the cold has subsided. New leaves, clear streams flow, and the cutest of all… “small wildflowers” ​​that bloom without showing off but make every step along the way filled with gentleness. 🌼 On the hiking trails around Kamikōchi, I came across many flowers that even though I don’t know all the names, each one of them made me smile without realizing it. The flowers are not in large groups, not arranged in garden plots, but they grow along the roadside, protruding from the cracks of rocks, or surrounding small streams. Sometimes they grow in the middle of old tree stumps — as if to say, “Beauty doesn’t have to be in a frame.” 💐 The ones I often see are: • Shakunage (シャクナゲ / Japanese Rhododendron) Sweet pink flowers blooming under the shade of large, humble trees • Nirin-sou (ニリンソウ / Anemone flaccida) Small white flowers Blooming in small clusters along the stream, it seems like nothing, but when the light hits it, the petals reflect light softly, beautiful like the morning light. • Yama-zakura (山桜 / Japanese forest cherry) that still remains in some places, the leaves and flowers bloom together, giving a soft, raw, unadorned feel. • Tanpopo (たんぽぽ / Dandelion) Bright yellow, seeing it makes it seem like nature is smiling at us. 🌱 And in some places, we only find small trees that are about to bloom, which are as beautiful as the flowers that are in full bloom, like life that is in its own rhythm of growth without having to rush. ✨ These flowers do not ask us to stop. But they bloom quietly right there. When we see them… our hearts feel strangely lighter.