The Spring of 800 Earthquakes

Today I’m thinking of Japan.  Land of the Rising Sun, and birthplace of my grandfather, Giichi Tagami.

I’ve had several business trips to Japan over the past 24 years, but none so special as the one March 2011.  It was sakura time — cherry blossom time — and all of the shops had pink blossoms in the windows and all of the food merchants had cherry flavored products — from sakura manju on the Shinkansen to Starbucks’ sakura macaroons and Sakura Frappuccinos®.

Big snowflakes slowly drifted and filled the Ginza neighborhood outside of the Olive Oil Sommelier Association of Japan the first day of our olive oil Aisatsu, but fair weather followed us the rest of the week in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Kobe.

The tremendous earthquakes which we experienced while we waited for our flight home to California on Friday afternoon were truly surreal and turned sideways everything we knew…