Alexia Bivings bent forward to read about an obi, an elaborate silk kimono sash decorated with cherry blossoms, the first symbol of spring. Behind her, out the windows of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Southwest Washington, the sky was dark and gray, and she will go home to Arizona before the trees blossom this year, she said.
But downstairs in a ballroom, a crowd of more than 500 gathered for the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, hoping for spring.
Schoolchildren sang the Japanese national anthem, dancers stomped and waved billowing sleeves, the mayor of Washington and the ambassador of Japan gave speeches, and two fat, furry, green Japanese cartoon creatures with weird little horns bumbled around the hotel.
Last year at this time, there were plump white buds ready to bloom for the start of the festival. This year, it feels as if winter might never end, with cold, damp weather and mostly bare trees rather than clouds of petals and sunshine.
But a ceramic vase in the hotel lobby, filled with tall, graceful branches, held the promise of spring and even a few delicate pink flowers.
"I saw a few trees on the way here with buds, just slightly pink," said Isabelle Badoux, 47, of Silver Spring.
Pink was everywhere in the hotel, in dresses and ties, in silk flowers and winter coats and tinted cocktails.
The celebration continues for two weeks, with flower arranging, papermaking, animation, taiko drumming, origami, karate and -- eventually -- lazy afternoons at the Tidal Basin under canopies of fluffy pink cherry blossoms.
Bivings's 16-year-old grandson, Renny, has gone every year. "It's beautiful," he said. In the fall, he's moving to Japan to spend a year studying. He became interested in Japanese culture in part because of the annual festival, in part because of the cartoons and in part because of the language, which he has picked up quickly.
He turned to Toshi Inomata, a 17-year-old exchange student from a city near Tokyo, and translated an introduction. Inomata said that in front of his house, at the beginning of spring every year, the cherry trees bloom so intensely that for a week or two, he can hardly see beyond the pink blossoms -- just glimpses of blue sky as though through puffy clouds.
They don't last long, he said.
Alexia Bivings used to live in New York, and she has visited her son and his family in Washington countless times, she said, over many years. "But I always miss the cherry blossoms."
