Tourists elsewhere in the world, though, are trying to make the sakura (cherry blossom) a symbol of hope.
C. is getting into the spirit with two special packages: Sakura and Cherry Blossom Give-A-Tree.
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This was in retaliation, some speculate, for Sakura tightening lending to Toyota's affiliated suppliers.
Instead of cats, she used an explosion of Sakura flowers or a circle motif she called Cloudy Moon.
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Last month, Toyota said it would not participate in a new share issue by Sakura, its house bank.
By contrast, Sakura has focused more on retail banking ranking top, for instance, among Japanese banks in mortgage lending.
Sakura's appeal is that its retail-banking business is a cheap source of funds.
This represents very rapid growth from the first Sakura-Con, then termed baka!
Shizue Melvin, designer at Edinburgh-based Scottish-Japanese tartan design company Sakura Scotland, said fashion conscious Japanese consumers have a disposition to Britain and British goods.
Sakura Bank (which recently announced a merger with Sumitomo) is strong in Thailand, thanks to its role as financier to the Mitsui group of companies.
The law doesn't apply to tax cases, although in a case against Sakura Global Capital last year he unsuccessfully tried an end-run around this exemption.
The "Sakura" is slated to debut in Europe sometime before the end of this year, with the Hermione to follow in the first half of 2006.
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This week a subordinated bond issued by Sakura Bank was trading at a whopping seven percentage points over Libor, the rate at which the healthiest banks borrow.
With its prime location on Sule Pagoda Road, the most expensive street in Rangoon, Sakura Tower is the oldest and among the highest-priced office blocks in the city.
The latter's merger with Bank of Tokyo (No. 12) is just the latest union among several in recent years, which also created Sakura Bank, No. 1 in the previous Financial 500.
The other FEBTC shareholders, which include Japan's Sakura Bank with a 25% stake, will get 0.6992 of a BPI share for every FEBTC share - that's a 27% premium over FEBTC's average past-month stock price.
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