Hana Matsuri，or “flower festival，”is observed on April８by the Japanese to celebrate the Buddha' s birthday．“Flower festival” alludes2) to the season and to the garden in which Buddha was born．

Unlike other big spiritual honchos3)，the Buddha was not a god．He was just a man，albeit4) a royal one，the princely son of an admittedly corrupt Brahman monarch5)．Some ２，５００years ago，in India，a white elephant intimated to the monarch's wife that she had conceived a child．She strode into the palace garden，where according to legend she painlessly birthed a son．As a young man，this Siddhartha Gautama bade farewell to all princely delights and sallied forth seeking －－and eventually finding －－enlightenment．

On April ８，every Japanese Buddhist temple sports a flower－festooned，peak－roofed portable shrine．Under the peaked roof stands a bronze statue of the infant Buddha，pointing up at the sky with his right hand and down to earth with his left．He stands in a basin filled with a dark，naturally sweet tea，brewed from hydrangea6) leaves．A ladle lies poised in the basin．After the temple service，the congregants7) line up at the shrine，taking turns using the ladle to pour tea over the statue's head．
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