The Smell of Spring!!

The weather is so nice and warm today. I can smell spring out there!

Do you feel like there are seasonal smells (or fragrance, should I say?)? I think that summer has the strongest smell - I mean, not sweat but smell of fresh green and probably of many kinds of plants. Spring, on the other hand, I think has a bit more sweeter smell maybe because of the buds and flowers.

But once you become pollen allergy, breathing deeply with your nose holes wide open is like committing suicide. I don't have one by the way - at least not yet - but the scary thing about hay fever is that you never know when you'll really get one. So I'm still afraid of it, but I bet it's nothing funny at all for those who already have it.

I hear that 1 out of 5 Japanese have pollen allergy. Among those 20%, most suffer from cedar pollen. The direct cause of the amount of cedar pollen and the number of poor sufferers is the planting and expansion of cedar trees by the ministry of forestry back in the 1960s. These trees were planted to meet the increasing demands of wood during the rapid economic development and in fact greatly contributed to the constructions of new houses in the age of increasing population.
But soon after, cheaper wood were imported from overseas and the demands for domestic wood went remarkably low for they were much more expensive than the imported ones. So the excessively planted cedar trees were kind of abandoned I guess, growing and increasing wild. Plus, they say that cedar trees give out pollen the most when they're about 40-50 years old, so now is like the worst years for pollen sufferers.

When I was a kid, I don't remember pollen allergy being such a huge news every year. But now, you see pollen forecasts just like a normal weather forcast. I suppose it means that "patients" are increasing that much, but also think is a result of Japanese people's allergy to something like dirt, dust and pollen.
Actually, I think that some of the "counter-pollen allergy products" have gone too far. There are so many things with the ad blurb like, "The strongest sterilization!" or "photocatalytic" or "sterilize with the power of silver!"
Hmmm, I do sympathize with it to some extent, but gee, still I think people can be more... easy-going.

Well, I can't be predicted that it won't come to me tomorrow. That's a waste of energy ye know...
But I definitely don't want to be the Red-nose-reindeer even in spring.