After seven months living in Japan I can confidently state the archipelago’s nature is nothing less than stunning. Coming from the grey drizzle of Belgium at the edge of the North-Atlantic, where sunshine is often scarce, and where the evergreen pines change little from season to season, except when they’re cut down for another unsightly development. Here in Japan, the abundance has continued to surprise with every new month.

The fleeting beauty of the sakura has become famous the world over. Every spring, the pink and white clouds drift down with the gentle breeze, covering the parks and streets in soft, snowy blankets of fading petals. 

But the spring has only just begun, and flowers of all types and shades continue to celebrate the sunny weather. A personal favourite is the peony flower, rich and full of colour, as the most elegant of all Japan’s flowers, often depicted on silk kimono or painted on the sliding doors of old palaces.

Of course the bright azaleas scream for attention when their time comes, branching out into every shade between the dawn’s fire and the dusks’ red embers. Their cousins, the wisteria, fades more quickly, dropping like waterfalls the tresses of their long blue blossoms, where they shrivel on the ground as the heat of summer dials warmer with every new morning. 

The cicadas crawl on the rough bark of the lime-green camphor canopies, or hide higher up in the dark green fur of the tall sugi cedars. They sing in eternal competition with the hundreds of happy birds darting around. Each flight is a reminder that animals too, seem to play for joy.

By late summer, gold tops the ears of the rice in the fields, tended with such love, they form the lifeblood of the farmer since ages past, and will continue to do so, for centuries to come. Here they sway as if one, a thick, soft blanket covering the landscape, like the fur of a sleeping dog in the sun, or the wind come to life itself.

And now autumn has descended from cold Siberia, carried South on a sharper kind of wind, scaring the cicadas away, and replacing them with explosions of colour in the treetops. The gingko dies first, turning into puffs of gold before evaporating with the swift breeze. But the maples linger longer, their millions of starry leaves glowing red and orange like the stained glass of mediaeval Europe. 

As I watch them fall, I wait for the wonders of winter.