"The roses bloomed, the roses bloomed" — Mike Maki sang it with his guitar, and it became a huge hit in 1966. Younger people may not know the song. The Palaceside Building opened that same year. We cannot help feeling a private connection.
On the rooftop garden of our building, roses are in full bloom in the planters. A colleague who oversees the planting told us the name: "FL Gruss an Aachen." The pale pink has a quiet elegance.
A search online confirms the German-sounding name: it was bred in Germany. We also found the note that "it opens pink, then shifts from cream to white, and reddens more in summer," so we are looking forward to what comes next. There are still tight buds, so more large blooms should keep opening.
The other day, riding the JR Joban Line limited express Tokiwa north, we heard "The Roses Bloomed" as the departure melody at Ishioka Station in Ishioka, Ibaraki. We assumed Mike Maki or songwriter Kunihiko Hamaguchi must be from there, but the reasons are that the rose is Ibaraki's prefectural flower, and that Ishioka has a place name said to be the origin of the prefecture's name. It was a departure melody that carried a traveler's melancholy.
Why not recall that early Japanese folk hit, enjoy the delicate roses, and linger a while on the rooftop garden.