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Right now, every Japan-related blog is posting beautiful pictures of the cherry blossoms in full bloom all over Japan. And quite rightly so - It`s like there`s pink snow on the trees. Today we went to a local temple and ate boxed lunches amongst it all with an old man`s radio behind us tuned to Japanese folk songs.

Although you will see thousands of pictures of Sakura all over the blogosphere, what you won`t see as much but goes hand in hand are the all-pervasive blue plastic sheets.

When you open your eyes to this phenomena, they appear everywhere. As temporary roofing for the homeless man`s shelter, at construction sites and any place where there are people outside. At the beach, on a picnic or cherry blossom viewing.

This raises two questions:

1: Where are they getting it all from? (as I`ve never seen it in shops)

2: Why do they use it?

The answer to the first one must be that there is a small factory that produces it all and is making a fortune selling it to the Japanese population. The second question has an obvious answer - it`s cheap, hardwearing and waterproof but this raises more questions.

When placed next to the pink snow trees, these garish blue sheets stand out like a festering spot on a nose. This is more confusing when you find out how important presentation is to the Japanese. A dish at a restaurant that contains only two or three items of food has those items seemingly placed with forceps, a protractor and ruler to assure the most beautiful arrangement. Yet they permit garish plastic next to jaw droppingly beautiful pink snow? What`s wrong with a picnic towel?

Any ideas?