JAPAN: Japan's weather officials have pronounced Tokyo's cherry trees officially in bloom, days after they apologised for wrong forecast

Japanese weather officials pronounced Tokyo's cherry trees officially in bloom on Tuesday (March 20), days after they were forced to apologise for errors in this year's blossom forecasts. The official blossoming, based on examination of a single tree in central Tokyo, was announced eight days earlier than usual, a spokesman for Japan's Meteorological Agency said. The blossoms appear only briefly and are seen by many Japanese as a poignant reminder of the shortness of life -- as well as a good excuse for a party. Forecasting their arrival is a serious business for many people. The forecasts are used by travel agencies to plan tours, city governments to schedule festivals, and by many ordinary people to organise picnics in parks. "It would not be an overstatement to say that we are doing a cherry blossom forecast at the risk of our lives," said Masaru Kida, team leader of the cherry blossom forecast section at private weather forecast firm Weather News. "Our Japanese customers are expecting us to go very far to make the forecast as correct as possible because cherry blossom is very special for the Japanese," he added. Last week the Japanese Meteorological Agency was forced to withdraw a forecast predicting that the flowers would appear in Tokyo on March 18, saying a computer glitch had resulted in an error. In the event, Tuesday's arrival of the blossoms came three days earlier than the revised estimates of March 23.

ITN Source | March 24, 2007

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