Homestay Weekend at the MBG

This August, as I have done for the past few years, I hosted two students during McGill University's "Homestay Weekend," which is part of their summer Intensive English Program for Asian Students. It is always a pleasure to spend a few days with these enthusiastic young students. This year I welcomed Saya Takasugi and Rie Kobayashi from Japan. Naturally I took them for an outing to the Montreal Botanical Garden. Here they are posing at the entrance to the Japanese Garden.



On a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon (for once there was no rain in the forecast) we sat in the outdoor pavilion and chatted about haiku. Both Saya and Rie were knowledgeable about haiku and had studied it in primary school. For the Japanese, the "kigo" or "season word or phrase" is the starting point of the poem. This is different from our Western tradition which begins with a moment or feeling. However, I decided today to try the Japanese approach.

Together we came up with a list of season words typical of mid-August in Montreal. Our list included: baby koi, first red leaves on the rhododendron, cicada screech, white hosta flowers, ripening berries, rhododendrons' waxy leaves,, horse tail, lotus flowers and iris pods. Once we had our list, we then each went our own way in the garden to write haiku based on any of these kigo. After half an hour, we met again in the pavilion to share what we had written.

It's difficult for us in the West to understand the tremendous respect that the Japanese have for haiku. Both Saya and Rie felt that their poems were not worthy to be considered true haiku. Personally I thought their poems were very good, but they were very shy and asked me not to include their haiku on my blog.

I am not as humble as they are, so here are the haiku I wrote.

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cool breeze
the round full heads
of snowball hydrangea

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lotus flowers--
the plain girl smiles
for the camera

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lazy Saturday
even the bee asleep
in the hosta

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And here is one final haiku dedicated to my two lovely homestays:

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Japanese hydrangea
two girls from Tokyo
apply lip gloss