Planting a 桜 (cherry tree) in the mountains 🌸

March 29, 2025

Imagine this:

You get an email from your waterworks bureau asking you to visit a dam and plant a ヤマザクラ (yamazakura / mountain cherry [tree]) in the mountains.

What do you do?

Well, I can tell you what I did:

植樹祭しょくじゅさい (shokujusai // tree-planting festival)

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting to get an offer to do something like the above in an inconspicuous email from 福岡市ふくおかし水道局すいどうきょく (fukuokashi suidoukyoku // Fukuoka City Waterworks Bureau).

Turns out, they were gathering a group of Fukuoka residents for a 植樹祭しょくじゅさい. Reading the email, it looked like it would be a lot of fun.

So I applied. And got 当選とうせん (tousen // chosen [in a lottery])!

But why did they offer this in the first place? What's going on?

Well, I'll let them explain:

Textbook Formal

福岡市ふくおかしでは、花粉かふん発生源はっせいげん対策たいさくと水源すいげんかん養よう機能きのうの向上こうじょうを目的もくてきとして、スギ・ヒノキなどの針葉樹しんようじゅを伐採ばっさいして広葉樹こうようじゅを植うえる取組とりくみを進すすめています。

Fukuoka City is moving forward with its efforts to cut down coniferous trees such as cedar and cypress and replace them with broadleaf trees to deal with pollen sources and improve water source cultivation functions.

They followed this up with an offer to help them plant some 広葉樹こうようじゅ (kouyouju / broadleaf trees), which was the aforementioned ヤマザクラ, as a bit of a 記念きねん (kinen // commemoration) for starting all of this work.

It was pretty rainy (you can tell I'm drenched in the above picture), but it was a lot of fun nonetheless! ☂️

That Japanese above was a lot, right? ^^

There is definitely some cool stuff in there, but it's… quite specific. We sometimes get pretty specific in the newsletter, but this is on another level, haha. That said, I was super curious why they were writing in hiragana instead of kanji for a part of this word:

水源すいげんかん養よう

So I looked up the kanji. Check out what is replacing that かん:

水源すいげん涵かん養よう

…I understand why they used hiragana instead.

If all of this is a bit too much for you, no worries. Learning Japanese (and getting comfortable with kanji, grammar, vocab, etc.) are all things that come with a lot of time and consistency.

It won't always feel this tough as long as you keep showing up, using quality comprehensive study resources, and going out and enjoying your Japanese.

I know I looked up stuff while I was on this outing. But I know I'll forget what I looked up someday because I won't use it enough, and then I'll see it again at some point and either remember it or need a reminder. Either is fine. That's all just part of the learning process ^^

That said, I was quite glad I've been showing up and pressing the Study Now button as much as possible. It would not have been as easy to handle all this unknown language without the firm foundation it's helped me build:

If you haven't started your learning journey yet, you'll need your account first! You can make one for free here:

Anyway, after showing up to one of the city offices, we (a group of about 20 people) got on a bus to go to the dam and tree-planting location.

On the way there, we were given a bit of a presentation about why they were planting 広葉樹こうようじゅ and taking down the 針葉樹しんようじゅ (shinyouju // coniferous trees), which involved going deeper into the reasons in the Japanese sentence we saw above.

This included stuff like the main 3 functions of a 水源すいげんかん養林ようりん (suigenkanyourin // watershed protection forest), which are…

雨水あまみずの貯蓄ちょちく機能きのう (amamizu no chochiku kinou // function of storing rainwater)

洪水こうずいの緩和かんわ機能きのう (kouzui no kanwa kinou // function of easing flooding)

水質すいしつの浄化じょうか機能きのう (suishitsu no jouka kinou // function of purifying water)

And they even went into detail about what the roots of various trees look like, and why that was important:

Textbook Formal

木きの根ねが地盤じばんに深ふかく広ひろく入いり込こみ土砂どしゃの流出りゅうしゅつを防ふせぎます。

The tree roots penetrate deeply and widely into the ground, preventing erosion.

They then told us how Fukuoka City relies on 9 dams, and that 6 of them are outside of the city itself. There is also a large reliance on a big system of rivers to the south of Fukuoka City (but still inside the prefecture).

It was a lot of info. We'd be here a while if I told you everything, assuming our brains didn't melt before we got through it all ^^;

Anyway, the area we went to was 曲渕まがりぶち (Magaribuchi), so the dam was appropriately named 曲渕まがりぶちダム (magaribuchi damu // Magaribuchi Dam). The dam looked really cool in the rain:

I'll post a few other pictures and a short video in the community Discord #newsletter channel. The surrounding mountains just out of frame were all misty and cloudy. Vibes were on point. Be sure to check them out ^^

Also uhh… I have a piece of 竹たけ (take // bamboo) and スギ (sugi / [Japanese] cedar) in my house now:

I cut it myself, so that's cool. The スギ smells nice. Not entirely sure what to do with them though

スギ (sugi / Japanese cedar)

Look what came up for me recently in my NativShark studies:

Pretty cool. By the way, that ヤマザクラ I planted should start blooming in about 5 or 6 years from now. Maybe they grow fast too? ^^

This sentence comes from a vocab flashcard in Milestone 40 (Phase 3, Unit 269). You can reach it by pressing the Study Now button as consistently as possible, if you're not there already:

If you haven't started your learning journey yet, you'll need your account first! You can make one for free here:

NativShark goodie bag

NativShark Units

2 new Units have been added to Phase Three!

As always, these Units are filled with vocab in unique contexts, any relevant new kanji, and natural conversations called Dialogues at the end, all of which are designed to get you functional in Japanese as efficiently as possible.

These Units also feature the following lessons:

Phase Three, Unit 386

Forming compound verbs with 取る

Phase Three, Unit 387

Saying "whether or not" with Vようと～まいと and Vようが～まいが

Thanks for reading all the way to the end ^^
Ty & the NativShark team