Hiroko's Hitokoto

Sun Mar 17 was St. Patrick's day. The parade was in Omote sando, where they blocked off half of Omote Sando Dori, and lots of Guinness was consumed! The shamrock is one of the symbols for this day. I remember that I used to look for a 4-leaved clover in the school ground for hours and hours. It's said that the 4-leaf clover brings you luck. One even saved Napoleon when he found it on the battle field and as he bent down to pick it, a bullet passed where his head would have been -- or so they say, anyway... Your chance of finding a 4-leaf clover is about 1/100,000, so there certainly is some luck involved in finding one. However, if you can't find one in the fields, you can at least see them in the city -- Alfa Romeo's logo is a "QUADRIFOGLIO" for its sports and racing cars.

It's getting a lot warmer these days, and you can feel the spring is there. Plums are in full bloom, scent of Daphne odor (Jinchoge), and even cherry blossoms are starting to boom. Spring is full of scent. Especially Daphne odor is in everywhere. Though the flowers are so small, you can't imagine how these tiny flowers smells so sweet and strong. Or since it's very small, they have strong scent to appeal to livings. This flower came from China, and it was called "can smell from far away". Even it's prohibited to use for the traditional tea ceremony in Japan due to this strong scent; it distract people from concentrating on tea. I saw a flog out on the ground the other day, probably woke up from hibernation already. I should go out, carried away by the fine spring weather.