Hanami, a tradition unique to Japan ?

[Maciamo]

I heard a curious explanation about this by a japanese teacher when another student asked regarding that; in many tragic stories of love -sort of Romeo and Juliet type-, the main characters seal their forbidden love by committing suicide together under a cherry tree (while it blooms of course), the cherry tree works as symbolism of their pure love that dies young.

And how many Japanese actually know about that story ? Nobody ever told me about it, and yet I asked a lot of questions about cherry trees to many people while I was in Japan. Even if they knew about it, it never was clearly associated in their minds with the reason why they like cherry blossoms.

[nova]

And how many Japanese actually know about that story ? Nobody ever told me about it, and yet I asked a lot of questions about cherry trees to many people while I was in Japan. Even if they knew about it, it never was clearly associated in their minds with the reason why they like cherry blossoms.

how old were them?

[Maciamo]

how old were them?

All ages, but mainly between 25 and 40.

[nova]

All ages, but mainly between 25 and 40.

and they didn't knew? how sad, still I think maybe it has a different reason for every japanese I guess to some of them cherry trees bring them good memories or something like that. After all you can't always generalize with people.
PS. Gaijinian: by the way; thanks I already edited it in the other post.