_{("Rain at Maekawa in Sagami Province" by Kawase Hasui)}

I figured we'd kick off with a hokku (haiku) from the great Basho. This one was written when he was only 21. At the time, it was popular to make allusions to poems and songs from "the old days". It's a technique he never really outgrew, but is more blatant here than it would be later. The reference here is to a No play called "Tengu on Mount Kurama" wherein cherry blossoms are a guide.

This is my first post in what I hope will be a daily haiku post. Before moving to Japan I thought haiku were pretentious and somewhat silly. It seemed to me the entire point was to count syllables and therefore anything could be a haiku.

After arriving here however and seeing real haiku poems, I fell in love. These are nothing like the mindless crap that passes for haiku in the US. The best of them paint a scene in your mind just as well as any painter could do. They suggest enough that your mind can fill in the details and transport you there.

And 17 syllables? Yeah... no. I have written many essays on this and will put some up here in the future.

I will be sharing some of my favorites here as well as any that I come across that I just like. I have many haiku books, so I won't run out anytime soon. Translations will almost always be my own, but I will mention that every time.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for this series.

Thank you for reading :)

	David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time.