Sources Cited
“Ichiro Suzuki Statistics and History - Baseball-Reference.com.” Baseball-Reference.com. N.p., n.d. Web.

02 Jan. 2014.

“Report: Ichiro Suzuki Donates 100M yen.” ESPN.com. N.p., 19 Mar. 2011. Web. 02 Jan. 2014.

Thimmel, Ken. "Ichiro Suzuki Gets Traded To The NY Yankees. Money Raised for Charity.” Ken Thimmel
Blog: Ichiro Suzuki Gets Traded To The NY Yankees. Money Raised for Charity. N.p., 24 July 2012.

Web. 03 Jan. 2014.

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The Rain of Flowers
Fangrui Tong (Ward Melville High School)
It was there that I stood, only one person in a vast world of many, but for that one moment I could
pretend that it was only me. A subtle breeze, warm and comforting blew past and on it rode a flurry of pink,
delicate and soft. A single petal gently caressed my cheek and as quickly as it had come, it was gone, going
back to join the wind in its graceful dance. The springy grass underneath my bare feet wriggled between
my toes, valiantly defying gravity in its attempts to grow and rise. The taste of the late March air was fresh
on the tip of my tongue, but an incessant beeping sounded from somewhere, muffled at first but growing in
a dreadful clarity with each passing moment. My eyes flickered open and my fingers blindly reached out in
the winter cold to turn off the alarm as I sighed, wanting to return to that wonderful place.

But unfortunately I had never really been there to begin with.

In all my past decade and a half years of existing on this planet there had always been two things that
fascinated me to no ends, a calming existence in my hectic world- rain and flowers. I still remember the day
these two seemingly ordinary works of nature had combined in this glorious mess of wondrous delight. I
had been on a field trip to a botanical garden, sometime around when I was seven or eight. Everyone had
decided that we would play tag in this marvelous house of intricately intertwined branches. However, while
everyone else was running around in the vain hopes of avoiding whoever was it, I was static, gaping,
staring at the orchard that lay before my eyes; an orchard of cherry blossom trees.

It was really a fantastic sight to see. With each gentle breath of a wind, the branches shook, quivering,
releasing tiny streams of petals to float loftily in the air and eventually settling onto the ground, but not
before giving a spectacular performance. It seemed as though some sort of enchanting music was playing,
for they swayed in time to a beat, fluttering and floating and coming to a gentle rest. The dark chocolate
brown of the tree trunks was almost masked and hidden by the plumes of descending blossoms, and indeed
it looked as though each flower was a single soldier in a vast army of pink raindrops.

It was raining flowers, and I was in bliss.

“The sakura are blooming.”
I turned around, startled out of my trance. It was the tour guide. He went on to explain that sakura
meant cherry blossom in Japanese; how every year the trees would bloom, decorated with the pink flowers,
and a week after they’d nearly all be gone. Hanami, he said, was a Japanese custom where the people
would enjoy the beauty of the flowers while everything was still alive.

And it was since then that I became fascinated with such an idea. That for one week every year
something so magical could happen and as quickly as it had come, it would be gone. I would visit Japan
everyday through my computer screen and simply stand there with all the falling petals. It was truly my
happy place.

It was also since then that I kept having the same recurring dream of being able to stand in Japan
among all that beauty, among the rain of flowers, and I still hope that someday my dream will be realized.

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