Newsletter 2. 4. 2025

Dear guests, dear friends!

Spring has arrived! The wilde plum trees are blooming, the apricots are blooming and here and there the cherry blossoms are blooming too. Everything is tempting to take food in a box – obento – and go sit with it on a park bench somewhere. In Japan, the cherry blossoms are already in full bloom and people in groups or even single are sitting with their boxes full of goodies under the blossoming trees and it can even be in a cemetery. Flowers beautify the world wherever they bloom! At Miyabi, we will be happy to prepare an obento box for you to take away. With sushi, with onigiri or with a special spring set, created just for this time.

You can also take a book with you to hanami – looking at the flowers – that we are currently celebrating at Miyabi. It is called Fireflies in Sleeves with the subtitle Insects in Japanese Waka and Haiku Poems from the 8th to the 20th Century. The poems were translated in a beautiful collaboration by Helena Honcoopová and Petr Borkovec. Among the insects in the poems are also butterflies, and we at Miyabi decided that from this Friday onwards in spring days we will be creating wonderful wagashi in the shape of butterfly wings for you to take away. There is also a poem about butterflies that I have selected for you from the book. It is composed by Shoutetsu, monk, who was active in the 15th century:
     wazuka naru haru no kochó no hakaze ni mo niohi wo chirasu hanasono no ume
     in the light breeze from the wings of butterflies blooming plum orchard smells red and white flowers of spring

Hurry up! The plum trees are falling quickly, just as the flowers of our winter sakura in the Zen garden have already fallen. Yes, sakura time is also a time of remembrance. Melancholy will embrace us, whether we want or not. Every year in April, we at Miyabi remember our beginnings and also Mrs. Yoshie Oshima, whose gift to the people of Prague is reminded every year in our Yoshie Ramen Days. This year they are April 15, 16 and 17 and, as always, the ramen will be prepared for you by master chef Jára Štěpánek. Mrs. Yoshie will be watching us from blooming Kyoto. She always looks forward to our ramen, because for her, the ramen at Miyabi is a melancholic memory of when she traveled to Prague with her husband, son and sister to make 100 servings of her delicious ramen at Miyabi for the people of Prague. You can read about Mrs. Yoshie and the ramen on our website. How time flies! The year was 1996 and the cherry blossoms were in bloom then as every year.

This year we will celebrate sakura, among other events, with a beautiful zashiki performance in the Zen house from 5:30 PM on Saturday, April 5th. I won’t be in the Czech Republic, but the tea ceremony master, Mrs. Markéta Reiter Fujita, will take care of everything. She will introduce her koto teacher, Mrs. Mayumi Ono, who will perform the next day on the stage of the New Town Hall together with two other artists. In the Zen house we will also prepare tea and serve wagashi sweets. Our wagashi artist will sculpt for you spring bird Mejiro in konashi style. For this zashiki sitting you need to make a reservation by email, the entrance fee is 380 CZK (tea and Japanese sweets are also included) and is payable on the spot.

Now, the annual Hanami festival at Hanspaulka will be on April 26th this year and Miyabi will again join with our food stall. We look forward to seeing you there! Details about the event and the map can be found on the ČJS website.

I think that it is necessary to make yourself happy whenever you can. I feel insecure these days, because looking at how values and virtues are collapsing so rapidly in our world is painful. That’s probably why my attention was caught by another haiku from the book of poems about insects:
     yo no naka wa naku mushi sae mo jouzu heta
     even in the insect kingdom some sing pure and others false

It is so and has always been so. There are certainly more who sing pure among us and I want to seek them out and you certainly do too!

Your Miyabi Darja